


Ballad About American Boys

by Dan_Francisco



Series: Trilogy of Tragedy [3]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Action/Adventure, Canon Divergent, Canon-Typical Violence, Drama, F/M, Happy Ending, Institute Ending, Not Canon Compliant, multiple POVs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2020-09-29 14:33:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 47,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20437610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dan_Francisco/pseuds/Dan_Francisco
Summary: Harvey, Sole Survivor of Vault 111, attempts to rebuild his life and make sense of the world he has been thrust into. His first step – finding his son Shaun. Step two – reconciling his role in a post-apocalyptic world – will prove much harder.





	1. The Hunt

He remembered everything, unfortunately. The first nuke dropping on Boston. Running with his family to the Vault. The terrorists who shot his wife, took his son. He had vowed vengeance, to destroy everyone who dared to stand in his way to get his son back. Suddenly, every little problem he had two hundred years ago didn't much matter anymore.

The Institute. The Railroad. Minutemen. Gunners, Raiders, Super Mutants…not much in the world made sense anymore. Harvey missed being in command of his mechanized infantry company, when his title was “First Sergeant”. When the world made _sense._

“Hey, Blue,” his interviewer, Piper, said, waving a hand in front of his face. “You there?”

“Huh?” Harvey asked, snapping out of his thoughts. “Oh. Right, uh, yeah. What was the question again?”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “How are you holding up? But I guess that's about the only answer I need.”

“It's been a rough couple of days,” he said, wincing. How else were you supposed to respond when everything you knew was taken away and replaced, seemingly in the span of a few minutes? “Can we just get this interview done?”

Piper nodded, leaning back on the old, dusty chair as she looked over her notes. “Yeah. So, 200 years old, 'Man out of Time' from the Vault, looking for… your son, Shaun. You_ believe_ the Institute might be involved -”

“I don't know for sure. Can't rule anything out.”

“Right,” she said. “Okay… well, for the last part of this interview, I want to do something a little different. I want you to make a statement to Diamond City directly. The threat of kidnapping is all but ignored in the Commonwealth. Everyone wants to pretend it doesn't happen. What would you say to someone out there who's lost a loved one, but might be too scared, or too numb to the world, to look for them?”

Harvey paused, taking a slow, deliberate breath. The air in Piper's office was musty, laced with the smell of paper and freshly-used ink. “You can only take it one day at a time,” he said slowly. “Just keep goin', yanno? S'all anyone can do.”

“We're all just doing what we have to, huh?” Piper asked, smiling as she jotted this down. “I think my readers can relate to that. Well, that's everything. It's gonna take me time to get this all together, but I think your story is going to give Diamond City folk a lot to talk about.”

She got out of the chair, putting her notes away in a folder labeled “New Stories”, sliding it into a filing cabinet that had clearly seen better days. “Anyway, I had agreed to come with you, right? Watch your back? You still want me to do it?”

“Yeah. Gotta find this Nick Valentine.” Harvey too left his chair, stretching his back out. It had been a long time since he had really sat anywhere. His relentless pursuit for Shaun had left him neglecting sleep to make his way to Diamond City, following vague leads that the people he met along the way gave him. Nick Valentine, a detective, seemed to be his best option right now. Everyone in Diamond City said he was the best at what he did.

Besides, it wasn't like Harvey had any other options in front of him. The world had been turned on its head, and so far, the only sane, rational people he had met were the detective's secretary and Piper. He sighed, rolling his shoulders back as he prepared to head out with Piper. Looked like she had an old pistol. Or, at least, it was old by 200 years later standards.

“So, what's the plan here, Blue?” Piper asked as she followed him out to the so-called “Jewel of the Commonwealth.”

Diamond City was less than ideal. Looked more like a ghetto than a real city. Still, it seemed relatively alright. At least the people here respected whatever rule of law was here. That much made sense.

“Valentine's secretary said he was working a case. Old subway they converted into a vault, or something. We're gonna go find him.”

Piper smirked, falling in behind him as he began to walk towards the city gates. “You think it's gonna be that easy, Blue?”

“First off, I got a name,” he reminded her. “It's Harvey. Second, no, I don't expect _anything_ to be easy.”

“Got it, Bl-Harvey,” Piper said, her boots clattering against the steel that led up to the concrete staircase. Harvey ignored her faux pas. One slip-up wasn't worth getting pissed over.

“So, the kid…” Harvey found himself asking, just about a mile outside of Diamond City.

“Yeah, she's my sister,” Piper said. “We've… we've always had each other's backs, you know?”

Harvey nodded, scanning the broken buildings that dotted Boston's streets. He had more than a few encounters with raiders over the past few days. Scumbags hid out everywhere, could never be too careful. “Makes sense,” he said. “Family's important.”

Piper hummed in agreement, and they continued to head down the road towards the subway. Harvey knew the place well – it was right next to a station before… well, all this. He knew Boston like the back of his hand, a benefit of being stationed here for so long.

“Hey, Harvey,” Pipe asked, clearly hesitating. “I… I gotta ask. You're not a Gunner, are you?”

“No,” he said flatly. “Gunners don't deserve the name. Took the worst parts of the Army and corrupted it even more.”

Before Piper could say something, gunfire broke out, aimed at them. Coming from the left. Harvey took cover, ducking behind a stone wall as he scanned the rooftops. Piper was stuck in the open, like a fish out of water.

“Get to cover!” he shouted, waving at her. “Come on!”

“Got 'em pinned!” someone shouted, a shrill voice in the day. “Go for the sides!”

Shit. This wasn't good. He looked up. More rooftops. Tall, three-story row buildings lined the street. If they had managed to build up a way to get to those rooftops, they'd have good fields of fire. He shouldered his rifle, spotting movement from an alleyway in front of him. Someone was shoving a magazine into their rifle from the roof, some maniac decked out in leather and the remains of a bed or something. Automatic weapons fire rang out from another building, this one almost right in front of them. Piper slid next to him, keeping herself low.

“So, what's the plan here?”

“Survive,” he said. “We'll get to step 2 later.”

She nodded, poking out of cover with him to start returning fire. The one of the first floor fell, either by his rifle or Piper's pistol, he wasn't sure. He could hear more just beyond the way in the alley. Harvey took the lead, sticking close to the wall as he moved down. This was a bar, he remembered it. Had been to this one a few times.

“Breach and clear!” Harvey ordered, advancing into the bar as he checked corners. “Go, go, go!”

“Huh?!”

He didn't have the time to explain right now. _Oh well._ One-man breach and clear. The first floor was empty, aside from the one they had shot just a second ago, their blood painting the opposite window. Overturned chairs, junk on the ground, scattered papers and spoils of raiding all over. Door. Was it unlocked? Yes. Harvey kicked it in, revealing a storage area that had a lost, confused raider inside, whose pathetic life was swiftly ended. Staircase. Time to go up, with Piper right behind him and pleading for him to slow down. Another door. This one led to the roof.

“Harvey, wait, do we-”

Piper's questions dropped fast as Harvey kicked open, bursting onto the roof and scanning with his rifle. The raiders had built up, made a little makeshift structure to provide overwatch, with boards providing pathways to other roofs. Not a half-bad setup, if a little jury-rigged. One final raider stood tall, looking over the edge of the roof for them and apparently unaware of Harvey and Piper behind him. Harvey barely hesitated. One shot, and he was done. Behind him, Piper was panting heavily, hunched over.

“Okay, dude,” she said, out of breath. “You gotta warn me when you're about to do that.”

Harvey shrugged, checking his magazine. Heavy. Probably half-full still. “Gonna have to get used to it. I don't turn down a fight.”

Piper's breathing began to stabilize, and she looked up at him incredulously. “Okay, well, there’s this thing called _communication,_ and it helps to _have _it in a fight. And you're _sure_ you're not a Gunner? Damn.”

“Pretty sure. Ready to keep going?”

She stood back up, smirking as she shook her head. “Long as we don't run into any more raiders, yeah.”

Nodding, Harvey began heading back down to street-level. Time to focus back on the job. Two more blocks down the road, and they began approaching Boston Common.

“Hey, Harvey,” Piper said, her voice full of concern. “We're heading into Boston Common. People don't come back from here.”

“Why's that? Place was fine before the War.”

Piper scoffed. “Might have been fine before the bombs, but now… I don't know. This is where people go missing. I don't wanna be another missing person.”

“We won't be.”

It wasn't at all like he remembered. Why should it be? Half of Boston was already decimated by the bombs, why should Boston Common be any different? Abandoned, rusted M6 IFVs were poised at either end of the Common, and the wrought iron fence surrounding the slice of nature had clearly seen better days. Even the flora _itself_ looked like it had been through hell. Dead, dry trees covered the area, with patches of dead yellow grass all over. The familiar man made lake inside was dirty, pond scum covering its surface. He remembered it looking far, far better than this. Maybe one of these days, all this death would go away, and someone green could grow here. Maybe.

Someone had drawn on pieces of metal fixed to the fence. Orders to stay back, and just “Swan” repeated over and over. Strangely enough, a bizarre symbol was drawn onto the sidewalk, a radial series of lines with a single dot in the middle. Weird. Maybe it meant something.

“Can you imagine just _relaxing_ in a place like this?” Piper asked as they wandered around the perimeter. “Without worrying about what's planning to eat you?”

“I don't have to imagine it,” Harvey said. “I _did_ it. All the time.”

“Right, yeah…” she replied, suddenly regretful. “Sorry about that.”

Harvey sighed, looking wistfully upon Boston Commons. He had missed this place, but he knew he would never be able to go back to it. Not unless someone here had managed to figure out how to build a time machine. “It's okay,” he lied. “It's easy to forget sometimes, yanno?”

There would be time to look back later. The entrance to the subway was just ahead, time to go down and start finding out what had happened. Park Street Station. He remembered going on this line, on his way to work before the War. Heading into the station, Harvey kept low, motioning for Piper to do the same. He could heard voices below. Scratchy, gravelly, like an old man. The other voice was lighter – male, mid 30s maybe at the most. One fit, one maybe with a foot in the grave. He cautiously crept down the stairs, trying to see if either voice was armed.

They were talking about some Skinny Malone, the gangster who supposedly had Nick contained here. The talk revealed some things he didn't know already – that parts of his gang thought he was weak, unfit to lead. That might be useful. Something about a new lover. Harvey peeked around the doorway, spotting one with wrinkly skin and no hair sitting on a milk carton. M1911 strapped to his side. The other had a shotgun, double-barrel.

“What's the plan here?” Piper asked, keeping her voice low.

“Fire and maneuver,” he said. “I'll keep them pinned down. You go under my fire. Head right to the bathrooms and keep them suppressed so I can move.”

Piper nodded, but he could tell she wasn't quite getting the gist of what he wanted her to do. Either way, he could improvise. The gang members began stirring, getting out of their seats and wandering around. Time to act. Harvey opened fire, killing one outright. The other with the pistol started running, heading to cover and vowing revenge. Piper began moving, covered by Harvey's suppressing fire. From the left, two new gang members rushed in – shit, he hadn't accounted for this. One had an SMG of some kind, the other a rifle. Harvey emptied his magazine, forcing the enemy to keep in cover.

The sound of Piper's pistol filled the room as Harvey began moving, heading to a pillar that offered some protection. He swapped out magazines on his way over, shoving a fully loaded mag into his rifle and charging it, chambering a new round. Bullets smacked the ceramic tile of the pillar he hid behind. Sounded like a single shot semi-automatic rifle. Might have been a carbine. He waited for opportunity and peeked out, scanning for targets. He found the one with the SMG first, sending a bullet into his chest and knocking him down as blood seeped out of his beige shirt.

The one with the M1911 was next, breaking from cover to get a better firing angle. Harvey's first shot was low, unaimed, hitting his leg and forcing the old man to land on the floor hard. Follow-up shot killed him. Two more shots rang out from Piper's gun, and the final one fell with scarcely more than a whelp.

“Do you think this is normal for all journalists?” Piper asked, shaking.

“There's bound to be more further down,” Harvey said. “Reload, check your ammo, and stay low.”

Piper hesitantly nodded, falling in behind him as Harvey began clearing the rest of this room. So far so good. Staircase leading down. Harvey followed it, watching the area flow out to the expected subway station. Lot of abandoned railway cars here, alongside makeshift barricades, junk scattered about, temporary defenses, and a hell of a lot of gangbangers. Harvey counted four just from what he could see. Might be even more further down.

His suspicions were confirmed when he reached the bottom of the landing. Another handful of gang members were down here, each armed with pistols, rifles, submachine guns and shotguns. He had the range and surprise advantage on them, they apparently hadn't heard the ruckus upstairs. He shouldered his M14, taking aim at a group heading his way and opened fire. Piper followed suit, heading down the stairs to take cover near a pillar. With the group of two dispatched, Harvey set his sights on the ones near the flatbed, where three men with fedoras on had taken cover behind sandbags. Another four were moving on a classic pincer attack run. Outgunned, but not outmatched. Harvey took advantage of their disorganized movement and chaotic firing to focus on the runners, taking out the right flank with relative ease.

By now, Piper had started firing on the group at the sandbags, keeping their heads down as Harvey shifted his sights to the left. Too late – these two had already made it to cover, cowering behind overturned trash cans and benches. He could get through those. Harvey fired four shots through their cover each, hearing their pained screams as kill confirmed. He swung his rifle over – Piper had taken care of one of the three. One of them was knelt over his fallen comrade, trying to triage him, and the other had risen up to start shooting. He didn't see Harvey, though, and for that he was punished.

The one trying to give aid broke from cover, opting to retreat rather than stand and fight. Harvey tracked his path, squeezing the trigger once and watching the bullet slam into the man's back, which sent him careening onto the tracks below him. Room clear, aside from any traps. He checked his magazine – half empty, judging by the weight. Should have enough ammo for another firefight or two at this rate.

“This your usual before everything happen, Harvey?” Piper asked, reloading her pistol.

“More or less,” he answered. “Maybe a bit less chaotic.”

Piper nodded, sighing heavily as she racked her pistol's slide back. Harvey began moving across the defenses and train cars, venturing deeper into the veritable catacombs underneath Boston. All of this pain, sweat, tears and blood was worth it to find Nick, if only to have even a slim chance of finding his son. Nothing else mattered to him. Not Boston, not America, not anyone else. Just him and Shaun.

He and Piper headed down into the subway, coming across a massive vault door. It was just like the one Harvey had left.

“You know there was a vault down here?” Piper asked.

“Nope. This is as new to me as it is to you.”

Harvey took out the Vault-Tec interface from his Pip-Boy, unlocking the vault and opening the door with his gun at the ready. Who knew what waited for him on the other side of this door. As the door slid away, the walkway rolled forward, allowing a path for him and Piper to walk on. He heard a voice – someone complaining about who opened the door. Two shots for him, and then two more for his friend that followed.

“Keep low,” Harvey advised Piper. “They don't know how many of us there are.”

“You sure about that one, Blue?”

“They're barely coordinated. If we can find their leader, all command and control breaks down.”

Piper gave him a disgusted look, cocking an eyebrow. “Jesus, Harvey, they're _people._ What the hell?”

“Yeah, people with guns who want to kill us. Need I remind you who we're looking for here?”

Piper sighed, shaking her head, but quietly fell in behind him anyway as they began heading downstairs. Deeper and deeper into the vault they went, dispatching small roaming groups of gangsters along the way. They arrived at what looked like an atrium, with a man standing before some sort of office, peering into the window. Harvey could hear him talking, but the words were unclear, hazy. Voice wasn't aimed at him anyway. He headed up the stairs, killing the man at the window with a single shot.

“Hey you!” called someone from inside. Must have been Nick. “I don't know who you are, but we've got about three minutes before they realize muscles-for-brains isn't coming back! Get this door open!”

“Already on it, pal!” Harvey searched the man's pockets, finding the password for the nearby terminal on him and punched it in. The door slid open with a nice huff of steam, and Nick began to smoke. But something was odd – this man's skin was a strange off-white, more like paint than anything else. And was that…circuitry in his neck? Metal hand? What the fuck was going on?

“Ah, my knight in shining armor,” Nick said. “But question is, why does he come all this way, risk life and limb, for an old private eye?”

“Okay, first off… what are you?”

“Told you, I'm a detective. Look, I know the skin and the metal parts aren't comforting, but that's not important right now. The only thing that _matters_ is why you went to all this trouble to cut me loose.”

Harvey sighed. Fine, he'd get answers on that later. “My son Shaun is missing. He was kidnapped, but I don't know who took him or where they went.”

“A missing kid, huh?” Nick said, scratching his chin. “Well, you came to the right man, if not the right place. I've been cooped up in here for weeks. Turns out the runaway daughter I came here to find wasn't kidnapped. She's Skinny Malone's new flame, and she's got a mean streak.”

“Okay then,” Harvey said. “Let's get out of here.”

“I'll agree to that,” Nick replied.

As they began to head down the atrium, Nick gave Harvey the necessary backstory on Skinny Malone's crew – small time, pushed out by larger gangs until they came across this vault. Perfect hideout with nobody else around to do anything. Nobody knew what had happened to the previous occupants, but Harvey had a pretty good idea.

“Hold on,” Nick said, crouching down. “I hear some of them coming.”

Three of them had walked in, calling for someone named Dino. Must have been the one Harvey shot earlier.

“How do you wanna play this?” Nick asked.

“We can't get around them. Got the element of surprise, I say we go in guns blazing.”

“Hard and loud, huh?” Nick commented. “Well, it gets the job done. Too bad for whoever cleans the floors…”

“I've tried that with this one before, Nick, he's not too keen on new perspectives.”

Harvey scoffed, shouldering his rifle. “Oh, so now you're _both_ going to tag-team me, huh? Let's go.”

The trio exploded out from their corner, assaulting their foe with speed and precision. With them dispatched, they could continue on, heading up so many staircases Nick wondered if a fitness instructor had built the vault. More gangsters opposed them on nearly every flight, and Harvey got more than a handful of near misses along the way.

“Oh, by the way,” Nick said, just before they reached the top of the vault to head to the station itself. “Skinny Malone's name is, uh… _ironic_, but don't let it fool you. He means business.”

Well, how bad could it be?

Of all the things he could have expected, “Skinny Malone” looking like a bowling ball with legs was the last thing on Harvey's list. He had begun lecturing Nick on coming in and shooting up his guys, something about how much this would “set him back”, whatever that meant. He and the “kidnapped” girl had also gotten into an argument in the meanwhile, with her telling Skinny he should have just killed Nick from the get-go. Was that even possible? Harvey wasn't sure. Either way, he, Piper and Nick were being held at gunpoint by them, and Harvey didn't even have the benefit of cover this time. Bad situation made worse by the fact these fellas looked like they had itchy trigger fingers.

Fuck it. He had to try it.

“Wait, Skinny. Remember the Quarry. Mama June on the rocks? Ring any bells?”

“How the _hell_ did you know about that?!” Skinny Malone shouted. “Okay, you know what, you can go. I'm giving you until the count of ten, and if I see you here, I'm going to pull the trigger until it goes click!”

Nick stole a glance over at Harvey as Skinny and his flame got into _another_ argument. “We better get going. Skinny doesn't count slow.”

Harvey and Piper needed no further encouragement. The three headed out of the subway, taking an access ladder out to the Commonwealth itself. By now, it was nighttime, and rain had begun falling. Almost as soon as he had stepped onto the back alley the ladder had brought them to, Nick looked up and took a deep breath.

“Ah, look at the Commonwealth sky,” he said. “Never thought anything so naturally ominous could end up looking so inviting. Thanks for getting me out, by the way. How'd you know where to find me?”

“Your secretary,” Harvey answered. “She sent me to come find you.”

“She did?” Nick said, surprised. “I should give her a raise. Well, now, you mentioned something about your son, Shaun, how he went missing? I want you to come to my office in Diamond City, give me all the details. Besides, I think you've earned the chance to sit down and clear your head.”

“Alright,” Harvey said. “Meet you there.”

Nick nodded, heading off into the gloom with a grimace on his face and a lighter that refused to cooperate. The dim little light flickered ahead of them, growing smaller and smaller in the gloom until it vanished. Piper stepped up behind Harvey, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“You gonna be okay, Harvey?”

“Yeah. I just…gotta keep going. I'll find him.”

Piper smiled softly, nodding. “I know you will. But… how _did_ you know that thing about the quarry?”

Harvey smirked, shaking his head. “Would you believe it if I said a drug-addled grandma told me?”

Piper tried to keep a serious face, but she broke almost immediately, laughing and shaking her head. “Wow, Blue, I've got some crazy sources, but that takes the cake. Oh, uh, Harvey, sorry.”

Shrugging, Harvey slung his rifle over his shoulder, stepping off to begin the long walk back to Diamond City. “It's alright. We all slip up sometimes, yanno?”

“I guess so,” Piper said, shrugging. “So, what's the next move?”

“Get outta this rain.”


	2. On the Trail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harvey begins a search for his son using the only lead he has - the man who kidnapped him.

“So, start from the beginning.”

Harvey took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as he opened his eyes again. This was all too real. His wife, dead. His son, missing. His world, destroyed and unrecognizable. And now he had to deal with robot men playing private eye. Right when he thought this world was making sense, something came along and shattered what Harvey thought he knew about it.

“We were in a Vault when it happened,” he began. “Vault 111. Some kind of cryo facility or something.”

“You were on ice, huh?” Nick said, his secretary taking notes right alongside him. “More importantly, you were underground. Sealed up. That's a _lot_ of obstacles to get through just to take one person. What else can you tell me?”

He winced. Harvey hated remembering this part. “My wife was… murdered. She was trying to keep them from taking Shaun and they…they just…”

Ellie held a hand out to comfort him, a saddened look on her face. “It's okay. You don't need to say anything more.”

“So we're talking about a group of cold-hearted killers, but they waited until something went wrong to resort to violence. Anything else you remember?”

“There was a man and a woman,” Harvey explained. “Male was in military gear, the woman some kind of science jumpsuit. They didn't say much, but she referred to me as the 'backup'.”

“Small team,” Nick said, scratching a nonexistent chin. “Professionals. The kind that know to keep their lips shut when on the job. Not sure what 'the backup' means though…”

“Shaun's just a year old,” Harvey said, feeling his face fall. “Why would anyone take him?”

Nick's eyebrows jumped up for a split second. “Good question. Why _your_ family in particular, and why an infant? Somebody would be taking on all of his care, and an infant takes a _lot_ of it. This isn't a random kidnapping – whoever took your kid had an agenda.”

“Lot of groups that take people in the Commonwealth,” Piper chimed in, her first words since coming into the office. “Raiders, Super Mutants, Gunners… the Institute.”

Nick nodded. “We can probably strike out Raiders and Super Mutants. This job's too high-tech and organized for them. That just leaves the Institute and the Gunners.”

“So you figure they're responsible?” Harvey asked. “Alright, what's the gameplan then?”

“One of the two,” Nick said. “I'd say Gunners are in the running, but they wouldn't be the ones pulling the strings. But the Institute… something goes wrong, blame them. Nobody knows what they do, or where they are, not even _me,_ and I'm a prototype Synth myself.”

“You're a prototype?” Harvey asked.

“As far as I know. Never seen one like myself. There's the older ones that are dumb as rocks and all metal, and the new ones that look good as human. I'm somewhere in between.”

“Alright, well, either way, I need to find Shaun,” Harvey declared.

Nick nodded in agreement. “This speculation is getting us off-track. Let's focus on what you saw. You said the guy was in military gear? Describe it, if you can?”

“Yeah. Metal brace on the right arm. Leather, boiled. Tactical pants. Holster for a large-caliber pistol.”

“Alright, some kind of improvised armor. What else?”

“He came right up to me, tapped on the window with his gun. Bald. Scar on his left eye.”

Immediately, Nick tensed up. “Wait. You didn't hear the name Kellogg, did you?”

“No, why? You think he did this?”

Nick leaned over, rifling through a file drawer in his desk. “Way too big of a coincidence,” he muttered, pulling out a large manila folder.

“Description matches,” Ellie said. “Bald head, scar, reputation for dangerous mercenary work, but nobody knows who his employer is.”

“Wait, I think I know that guy,” Piper said. “He bought a house here, didn't he?”

“He _did,”_ Nick spat out. “And he had a kid with him!”

“He was too old for this case, though,” Ellie pointed out. “That boy was about ten years old.”

“Another kidnapped kid?” Harvey asked.

“Either that, or he's got a son of his own,” Nick speculated, his left eyebrow jerking up for a second. “Not a comforting thought in any case…both of them vanished a while ago. Haven't been heard or seen since. How about we take a walk over there, check the place out? See if we can figure out where he went.”

Harvey nodded, getting out of the chair. “Alright, let's go then. Gotta find Shaun.”

Nick and Harvey strolled over to this Kellogg's house, a lonely structure that offered a good view of who went in and out of Diamond City. The lock was tougher than anything Nick could break through, and Harvey didn't know enough about picking locks to even attempt. A little cajoling at what passed for City Hall got him the key to the place, and into the lonely hut they entered. It was far simpler than Harvey expected, more like a box with a staircase to an upper floor than an actual _house._ A desk stood in the middle of the room, with a toolbox and various tools on top of it.

The desk itself hid a button, revealing a hidden room that must have served as Kellogg's hideout and command room. Weapons and ammo had been stored in here, alongside signature cigars of his and files.

“Nick, I'm no master sleuth like you,” Piper said, rummaging around the old files scattered across the floor, “but I think this guy's in the wind.”

“Goddammit,” Harvey muttered. “Where could he have gone? D-does he have some kind of base or something? Another house?”

Looking over the room, Nick sighed. “Look, could be a stretch, but I think I heard rumors of him heading southwest. Could be a start.”

“What, like to Florida or something?” Harvey asked. “That's not helpful, dammit!”

“Slow down there, hotshot,” Nick said, lighting up another cigarette. “He doesn't travel outside the Commonwealth for long. We start by going southwest a bit, see if anyone saw him. Lot of people walk these roads, and I'm sure he's left some marks of his own behind.”

Through clenched fists, the only external indicator of his extreme rage that he was attempting to hide through a barrier of level-headed stoicism, Harvey tried to come to terms with what he was hearing and see the logic in it. He blinked, quickly at first, and then slowly, allowing the anger to wash out from his eyes and let him see more clearly. Nick and Piper were both staring at him – Nick with an air of reserved concern, and Piper clearly worried. Could they see his frustration, the boiling anger that threatened to explode with the same fire that had consumed his home?

“Alright,” Harvey finally said, letting his hands relax. “Let's see what we can find, I guess.”

Their travel took them to about a mile outside of Diamond City. They had followed the road leading out from the baseball stadium turned town to a pond that had a small cheap plastic folding chair next to it. A burnt-out car husk was nearby as well.

“Kellogg must have stopped here,” Nick said. “Search around, see if we can find anything.”

As if there was even much to search. Nick took to examining the ground, probably searching for bootprints. Piper scanned the horizon, like the crests of Boston's hills had the secrets to Kellogg's whereabouts in them. Harvey stepped closer to the pond, looking at a wooden box that had sat in the sun for far too long. An old, dirty ashtray was placed on top of it, and within that ashtray, a cigar.

“San Francisco Sunlights,” Harvey muttered, examining the forgotten cigar. “Kellogg's brand…”

“He had to have been here, then,” Piper said. “Stopped to admire the scenery for a bit?”

“Cigar's cold,” Nick noted. “Ashes are long gone. Could be a day old, or he smoked this last week.”

Harvey shook his head, tossing the cigar anywhere. Who even gave a fuck anymore when the world was destroyed? “Doesn't help us _now_ though. He stopped here, but this could have been a stop for any reason.”

“Well, hold on there. His boots are pretty distinct. I'm betting he stopped here and headed on the tracks. Lot of people know his face, might be trying to avoid the main roads.”

“Why would he take the railroad tracks?” Piper asked, skeptically throwing up an eyebrow. “Doesn't make much sense to me.”

Harvey knelt down, looking at the bootprints that Nick was talking about as he and Piper began talking about why someone would follow the tracks. Something was off here. These looked like Kellogg had been caught off-guard by something, or some_one._ The prints took off and began growing wider as they headed towards the tracks. Why would he run?

“He's running from someone,” Harvey concluded. “That's why he took the railway. Wanted to throw whoever was chasing him off the trail.”

“Shit, who else could be after him?” Piper asked.

“Only one way to find out,” Nick said. “Follow the trail.”

Harvey nodded, taking the lead to begin heading down the railway tracks nearby. It'd be hard to track him from here. Any small clue could help – after all, he had to call _somewhere_ home. The house in Diamond City was obviously temporary, Harvey could tell right away. He had to have had a secondary base somewhere. Harvey began to put himself in Kellogg's shoes. If he were on the run from one or more pursuers, what would he do? If they had surprised him like they did Kellogg, lead them into a semi-defensible position, put up a fight. Bridge up ahead – that was a good place to hold up.

“Bet you there was a firefight here,” Harvey announced. “I'm going to check out the underpass.”

“I'll be up here,” Nick said.

Piper elected to follow Harvey, heading down with him. He was right – there _had_ be a firefight here, and recently too. The bodies hadn't been picked at by wild animals, so it couldn't have been less than a day or two ago. Two bodies, both male, shot through the chest. Clean hits, large-caliber pistol like he remembered, Yup, this was Kellogg's work, alright. Spent brass was all around, but it wasn't from the revolver that Kellogg lugged around. It was from the rifles these two raiders carried. One of them must have got a hit in. Bloody bandages lay on a pipe, probably the remains of expedient first aid.

“Wow,” Piper said, looking over the blood and bodies. “You're pretty good at this detective thing, you know that?”

“He's hurt. Blood trail, might be able to follow that.”

By now, Nick had joined them, unable to find anything of significance on the bridge itself. A more thorough search revealed multiple weapon casings, which meant that Kellogg had not taken out all of the assailants following him.

“Alright,” Nick said. “As far as I can see, there's a few options for what went down. Kellogg here pins a handful of these guys down, knocks out two, but gets hit himself. Now, either he runs a zigzag, trying to shake these guys, or he keeps going for another place he knows he can hold and defend.”

“Hold and defend is more likely,” Harvey said. “From what I've seen, he's smart. Knows what he's doing. Zigzag will only get him so far, so he has to find another spot to stand and fight. If I were him, I'd take the next bridge, I think it's Eliot Bridge.”

“That's a bit of a jaunt,” Nick muttered.

Piper shrugged. “Only lead we have. May as well follow it, right?”

Boston looked nothing like Harvey remembered. He recalled Boston as being vibrant, colorful, the kind of place you'd settle down and raise kids. He remembered how it looked in the fall, when the leaves changed color and began dropping. It seemed lately, there were never any leaves in the first place.

By his map-reading, the Eliot bridge was about two, maybe two and a half miles away. They could follow the railroad tracks – assuming nothing stood in their path or blocked further progress, like a derailed train – to the highway, pick up the trail from there. Harvey scanned the horizon, watching the blue Commonwealth sky merge with the gray stick-like trees that extended from the bleak brown ground, with occasional spurts of sickly yellow grass concealing potential irradiated threats. These colors were not at all like the ones he remembered from his youth. The sky hadn't changed much, at least he could rely on that, but nothing else looked like home.

The sound of Piper's boots and Nick's loafers, both hitting the ground and stepping over aging wooden railway ties, brought Harvey out of ruminating on the past and back to the terrible present he was now living in. Readjusting the weight of his M14 on his shoulder, Harvey joined them, trying to understand why he had been cursed to live in this world.

They walked in silence for about half an hour, with little in the way of words other than Harvey calling out holes for them to avoid. As they passed a particularly nasty hole, Nick's lighter began to click. A small _whoosh_ told Harvey that Nick had successfully lit up another cigarette.

“Feels like old times, huh Piper?” Nick commented.

She scoffed, sighing as she jumps around a tree branch in her way. “Yeah, I wish it didn't. Feels too much like that guy from the Capital Wasteland.”

“I remember,” Nick muttered.

“I always felt bad for him. I think I heard he's hanging around in Goodneighbor now?”

“Hey, uh, word to the wise,” Nick said, lowering his voice as if Harvey couldn't already hear him. “Might not want to talk about _that_ case too much, given present company.”

“Oh. Right. Yeah…”

“Switch tower,” Harvey announced, spotting the square wooden building just a few hundred meters away.

“Huh, neat,” Piper said. “Didn't figure you for a train guy, Harvey.”

He didn't much like the look of this area. Too many trees, both alive and fallen. Overturned railway car could be a nice ambush spot. Was that someone wearing an old camo uniform ahead, or his eyes playing tricks on him?

“We should clear it for hostiles,” he said. “I don't want to get shot in the back on my way to I-96.”

Nick nodded, pulling out a weathered and battered revolver. “Hate to say it, but our spry old man is right. Raiders like hanging out here.”

“Great,” Piper muttered. “If we keep up this gunfight thing, I'm _never_ going to be able to take notes.”

Just like Harvey predicted, two men with standard-issue laser rifles and filthy military gear stepped out of the tower. They hadn't spotted them. Good for him, but had Piper and Nick seen their foes? Wait, shit, one of them was turning towards them.

“Contact front!” Harvey shouted, raising his M14 up to his face and moving to the right. Red lasers burned in the air as the raiders began heading for cover. Voices. Scattered, more than two. Shit, there were a lot more contacts here. The two with laser rifles weren't the only threat. Piper and Nick's pistols popped through the air as they returned fire, covered by Harvey's M14. Somebody's rifle started clattering. That was a Type 56, Chinese assault rifle. _Fuck,_ they were in the open here.

“Shift right!” Harvey yelled, trying to keep the ones near the railcar suppressed.

“Hey, fuckface!” one of the raiders yelled. “There's only three of these assholes out there! Go fucking murder them!”

“What?!” came the reply from “Fuckface”.

“_There's only three of them! Go fucking shoot them, motherfucker!”_'

Harvey looked up, checking the second floor of the switch tower. Looked like the raider up here had an automatic weapon. Was it an LMG or just a rifle? He couldn't tell from this angle. Either way, this gunner had to be dealt with immediately, the danger he posed was too great. Harvey swung his rifle up, sending two rounds into his chest and knocking out the raiders' fire support.

“Blue!” Piper yelled, shoving a new magazine into her pistol. “We're a bit outmatched here!”

Harvey rolled to the left, throwing off one raider's burst into his former position. Two more shots, two more impacts against his shoulder, and another one knocked down. Nick landed some good shots on one near the railcar, making their situation a bit more tenable. At least, until three more raiders poured out of a nearby warehouse. Harvey shoved himself off the ground, rushing under enemy fire to a tree that offered some good protection.

“Here they come!” Nick yelled, firing off the last of his loaded ammo.

The three reinforcing raiders joined their remaining comrade at the railcar, who was busy shooting at Piper and keeping her from moving. Time for Harvey to return the favor. The three that had just arrived didn't see him there, so he took his time lining up his shot on the one with the laser rifle. Nick and Piper could handle the rest once he was out of the way. One gentle squeeze of the trigger took out this fighter, followed up by the one next to him from Piper's pistol.

Harvey broke from cover, moving up and taking shots at their foes. A bullet whizzed past his head as pistol and rifle fire clashed in the air. Five more shots from Harvey's rifle later, and the scene was quiet once more as the final two raiders were killed.

“Just when I thought we were getting along…” Nick muttered, letting .44 magnum casings fall to the ground.

“Oh, shit,” Piper muttered. “Guys, you see this sky, right?”

He looked up, seeing the heavens turn green. “What, tornado? Fuck, we gotta get going.”

“No, not a tornado,” Nick said. “Worse, radstorm. We gotta move, and _fast.”_

“What the hell's a radstorm?” Harvey asked, breaking into a sprint right behind Nick and Piper.

“Worry about it later!” Nick yelled back. “Just keep running and hope we get to cover quick!”

A minute of running later, and they came across another switch station. Looked like most of it was still intact, and so they headed into the lower half of the station. Harvey swung his M14's stock at the flimsy piece of wood that barred the door from being opened, letting Nick and Piper get in first.

“Alright,” Harvey said, catching his breath. “I say again, what the hell's a radstorm?”

“Nasty radioactive winds from the Glowing Sea,” Nick explained. “Most last about two hours. We'll know when the rain stops.”

Well, at least there were worst places – and worse people – to be stuck with. Harvey sighed as he took some water and food out of his bag, sharing what he could with Piper. Nick joked about snacking on the junked fan nearby, leaning back and waiting for the storm to pass.

The dingy switch station they had taken refuge in looked like someone had set off a bomb in it. A filing cabinet had been raided by someone a hell of a long time ago, with scattered and burned papers all over the place. Whatever meaning or relevance they had was now long lost. The wind and thunder rattled the structure constantly, and for a moment he was concerned the entire thing would collapse on their heads. The food and water had been put away, with the only thing left to do now being wait out the storm.

“I've been thinking,” Harvey said, slowly closing his eyes so he could visualize what he was about to talk about.

“I hate it when clients say that,” Nick muttered.

Harvey ignored him, seeing a nebulous image of Kellog – what he recalled Kellogg looking like, anyway – forming in front of him, waving his Magnum around like a kid with a toy sword. “So. Kellogg. If he's being pursued, he likely won't bring them to his main base. I figure he'd instead lead them somewhere he could hold and defend.”

“Yeah, I thought we settled this back at the overpass,” Piper said. “You reconsidering the bridge idea?”

“No. He'd still go there.” He could see it now. Kellogg against however many pursuers, funneling them into a killzone. Minimize their flanking routes. “But going to Eliot Bridge won't help us find him, his base. Man like Kellogg needs three things to survive in the field. Food. Shelter. Water. He's already got the shelter.”

“Right,” Nick said. “His base, little hideout we're looking for.”

Harvey nodded. “Where's he get his food? Water?”

“Well, you can plant potatoes and razorgrain just about anywhere and it'll grow,” Piper chimed in.

He had seen those around. Sounded about right. “Still needs water if he's got a garden. Can't rely on pre-war canned food, depending on what's in it might have spoiled, either by a bad seal or the food itself going bad. Standing water's no good, would have to be near a river or something. Needs wood to boil water and make it drinkable.”

“Only river that's got anything drinkable is Charles River. Not nearly as much radiation in that,” Nick said. “Would have to be close to make sure he can still get a good amount of water and not waste too much time.”

“Fourth thing, in case Kellogg wants to be a vegetarian. Ammo. Where's he source his ammo? Can't make .44 easily, not without the primer, lead, and gunpowder.”

Piper paused, a hesitant breath escaping her lips. “You know… I did a story on this a while ago. Uh, there's a Vault not too far from here, Vault 81. They usually trade with people, I think they're sitting on a good amount of ammo. Only thing is… they're a touch on the distrustful side.”

“How d'you mean?” Harvey asked.

“Think President Wilson,” Nick muttered, his lighter flicking to light up another cigarette. “Xenophobic isolationists through and through. Only recently started trading with anyone at all, really.”

Lot of reasons that could be. “What do they trade for?”

“Used to be fusion cores,” Piper said. “Nowadays it's mostly tools, steel, electronics, that kind of thing.”

“Why the sudden change?” Harvey asked. “Seems odd.”

“Nobody knows. They just… stopped asking for fusion cores from people about…”

“Six months ago,” Nick said slowly. “Right about when Kellogg started operating out of the Commonwealth!”

Harvey opened his eyes, seeing Nick with a shocked expression on his face. Probably trying to figure out how he hadn't pieced this together sooner.

“Alright. Sounds like Vault 81 might be the place to check out, then. How hostile are they to outsiders?”

Piper shrugged. “We should be fine if we don't go in guns drawn. Not sure how much _information_ we'll get out of them, though…”

“We'll have to cross that bridge when we come to it,” Nick muttered, shaking his head.

The storm outside continued to rage, putting to rest any ideas of heading out soon. Another scan of their environs didn't turn up anything new for Harvey to contemplate over, unless he felt inclined to examine the daily spending habits of this lonely switch station. Harvey checked his rifle, may as well while all was quiet. Magazine felt light. He could see at least two rounds in the magazine, might be all that was left. One in the chamber. Might as well reload, never knew what would happen when they got out of this little hut.

“So, what's the plan when we hit the road again?” Piper said.

“Get to Vault 81,” Harvey answered. “See if we can talk to them.”

“You really think they'll just give Kellogg up like that?”

Piper winced, shaking her head. “Something doesn't seem right, though. I mean, why would they trade with him? Kellogg doesn't exactly sound like a shining beacon of friendliness and positivity from what I've heard.”

“He's not,” Nick said, puffing away on his cigarette. “Guy's a cold-blooded killer, just in case Harvey's story didn't convince you otherwise. You've got a point though – I think we've got ourselves another mystery on our hands.”

Half an hour later, the storm had ended, and they took up the path to Vault 81. An abandoned, half-flooded part of Boston was the stage this time. Must have been a community at _some_ point, Harvey could see traces of a makeshift post-War shop on the side of the road, and there had clearly been people living in one of the lake houses at one point. A Vault-Tec trailer outside hosted a sleeping bag, and there were ramshackle accommodations for somebody, but the previous occupants were seemingly gone. Unlike Vault 111, Vault 81 was built into the side of the terrain, a rocky cave the entrance instead of an elevator.

The jagged rocks began to give way to a well-refined carved out entrance, with metal walkways and a vault door he was more than familiar with, excluding the fact that it said 81 instead of 111 on it. It was all too familiar, from the damp rock walls to the smell of oil pervasive in the air.

“Looks locked,” Nick said. “Guess knocking on the door is out of the question?”

Harvey stepped up to the vault control panel, removing the adapter plug and inserting it into the pin slot. So far, so good. Everything seemed to be working. Now able to actually open the door, Harvey removed his adapter plug and hit the giant red button.

Except nothing happened.

“Hold on,” a voice said, coming from the control panel speakers. “Vault 81 security. I don't know how you got that Pip-Boy, but you better explain what you're doing at our door and why you're trying to get in.”

“Calm down,” Harvey said. “I'm a fellow Vault dweller, looking to trade.”

“In that getup?” the officer challenged. “I don't buy it. I'm gonna…”

For a second, he thought the man had cut out, until the speaker crackled again. “Alright, uh, Overseer says if you help us, we can trade. Got it?”

“Sure,” Harvey said.

With a shudder, the gear-shaped Vault 81 door began to open, slowly sliding forward and then rolling to the side. As it finished its rotation, a walkway connected with the small stairway, providing entrance into the Vault's reception area. Two men in standard Vault-Tec security uniforms stood at the end, one holding a Thompson, the other an M1 Garand. He noticed this at Vault 111 – looked like Vault-Tec had saved money on security by buying up stocks of WWII weapons.

“Hold it right there,” the one with the rifle said. “Hands where we can see them, all of you. Told you he ain't a Vault dweller.”

“Look, you said we can trade if we help you, right?” Harvey said. “What do you need us to do?”

The one with the Thompson inched forward, reached out as far as he dared with a piece of paper in his hand, letting Harvey take it – slowly. “This here's a list of things we need. Get it, and Overseer says we can trade.”

Harvey sighed, unfolding the paper to look it over. Pretty standard stuff. Screwdrivers of various heads and sizes, hammers, nails, adhesives, duct tape, saws. Unless it had been picked clean, he knew a place to find all this. “Alright,” he said, putting the paper in a back pocket. “We're, uh, gonna go get you this stuff. We'll be back soon.”


	3. The Fort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harvey ends his search for Kellogg.

Hardware Town was, before the war, Boston's “favorite hardware store”, but to Harvey, they always sold cheap Portuguese crap. Maybe when the world had ended, it didn't much matter. Tool was a tool, right? Had to be better than whatever somebody made with their crude backyard workshop. Approaching the small hardware store, Piper spotted a woman in front of the storefront. She was waving her hands wildly, trying to flag them down.

“Help!” the woman shouted. “She's in the back, help me!”

Without waiting around, the woman disappeared into the store, the door creaking shut behind her. Harvey frowned, taking his M14 up into his hands as he approached.

“Something wrong?” Nick asked, picking up the pace.

“We should help her,” Piper commented.

“Something's off,” he said. “I'm not sure if I like this.”

Harvey took up point, opening the door and allowing Nick and Piper to enter, following behind them. The interior of Hardware Town looked even worse than he remembered, but it wasn't because of a shopping spree. No, somebody had deliberately rearranged these shelves. Piles of old boxes, stripped of the tools inside, were all over. Cans from food, remnants of other people living in here, presented tripping hazards. Too much junk to account for, and the lights had stopped working long ago.

“She's back here!” the woman yelled, running into the back and slamming a door behind her.

“Shut up!” a harsh voice said, trying but failing to be quiet. “They're heading this way! Be ready!”

“You hear that?” Harvey whispered to Piper.

“Yeah. I don't like it.”

Harvey identified a second entryway – forgotten side room, with holes that led underneath the floors. Motioning for Piper and Nick to follow him, they crept their way underneath the floorboards. Above them, the sound of uneasy footsteps could be heard, of people shifting their weight.

“What's _taking_ so long?” somebody asked. “Why don't we just shoot them in the fucking face when they walk through the door?!”

“Go check it out then,” another one suggested. “Maybe they're on to us.”

The first one stared moving. “Fine, I will.” Heavy boots stomped on the floor. “Fuckin' stupid idea, anyway…”

Harvey turned behind him as he crept underneath the floor, putting a finger to his lips to remind his companions to be quiet. Not that he thought they needed it, but better to be safe than sorry. They moved through the basement, coming to a collapsed section of floor that allowed entrance into the basement. Here, they found a collection of bodies, stripped nude. They clearly were not the first to fall for this ruse.

“There's nobody here!” one of the raiders shouted from the front. “I thought this dumb slut said she got people to follow her!”

“I did!” the woman said. “They… they were right behind me!”

Gunshot. Somebody had a shotgun, and deemed it necessary to use it. “Fucking useless! _Fuck!_ Look around! Maybe they think they're smarter than us!”

He looked back again – Piper and Nick had heard the entire exchange, and crept closer to him.

“Alright, Blue,” Piper whispered. “What's the plan?”

“Stay together, we can overwhelm them with our firepower,” he said.

Nick nodded, silently checking his revolver. Together, the three made it up to the main floor, surrounded by a storage room stacked floor to ceiling with boxes and crates, no doubt holding tools and other various things the hardware store once sold. The raiders had made pathways from one storage rack to the other, and rolled out mattresses. They probably used it as their hideout. One stood at the end of the storage room, leaning against the wall. Harvey looked up – nobody. Couldn't have been more than three hostiles here.

“This place is empty,” someone from the front called back. “What the fuck are we doing?”

A raider with only a pair of pants on yelled out, taking his rifle and beating it against a crate. “FUCKING NOTHING IS WHAT WE'RE DOING! GODDAMMIT!”

“Arr,” growled one with glasses. “Me blunderbuss be seekin' blood! Ye scallywags ain't good fer scrubbin' the deck! Off me ship, I say!”

“Why the _fuck_ are you talking like one of those fucking weird ship robots?” the one leaning against the wall said.

“Ye call yerselves marines but mariners I say yer not! I bet none of ye could rig a blunt-gasket 'round a mast and jigger if yer lives were hangin' in the balance!”

_“What the fuck did you just call me?!”_

Harvey looked back, exchanging a confused look with Piper and Nick. Whatever – time to end this charade. He shouldered his rifle, taking aim and firing at the leaning one.

“Shiver me timbers!” the apparent pirate shouted. “Let the bloodlettin' be flowin' over! I show no quarter to lubbers such as thee!”

“Fuck this!” the third one shouted, bolting away from the group.

_“You yellow-bellied sapsucker!”_ the pirate shouted, before getting shot in the chest twice by Piper.

Piper stood up first, heading down the storage room to check the corpses, followed by Harvey. No other voices, no more gunshots. This short firefight had ended, once again in their favor.

“So,” Piper said, drawing out her words. “Do… we wanna talk about that, or?”

“Bet you they were hopped up on Jet or something,” Nick speculated as he looked around them. “How ironic. We're in a hardware store, and we don't have a crowbar to pry open these boxes.”

Harvey smirked, unlatching a smooth blue-toned container. “Want me to stand behind the counter, try to take your money, Nick?”

The container itself had most of what was on the list. A few unopened boxes of nails, hammers, other miscellaneous items on their list. Looks like his instincts were right. Had to find a bag for all this stuff, though – his day pack wouldn't hold even half of it. These raiders weren't using their kit bags for anything, may as well requisition some of them. Harvey directed Piper and Nick to start collecting the necessary tools, stuffing them into bags and pouches. Time to head back to the Vault.

* * *

The Vault security officers had examined the bags thoroughly, reluctantly informing Harvey and company that these were the things they had asked for. He surprised them by asking not for material trade, but information – primarily, if they traded with Kellogg. The story was strange, and went through a lot of twists and turns, but eventually the three figured out that Kellogg traded with them under an assumed name. He provided them with fusion cores – from where, nobody knew – and in return they'd give him all kinds of ammo. They claimed he was a kind, gentle man, surprised at the accusations Harvey and Nick slung his way.

In the end, it didn't matter much. He mentioned holding up at an old base. The only one nearby that Harvey knew about was Fort Hagen. With all the nukes that had been dropped on Boston, Harvey wasn't sure it'd still be standing. Walking on the approach to Fort Hagen, it was like stepping back in time. He remembered visiting friends here, dropping off reports, meeting up with the armored regiment stationed here for exercises. This place used to be pristine, a cornerstone of the US Army's latest developments, but nowadays the base looked more like a testament to man's supreme arrogance and decadence, decaying into a ruinous heap of disgrace.

“This is it,” Harvey announced. “He has to be here.”

Nick stepped forward, taking a look around. “Front's boarded up. Guess we'll have to go around.”

“I know a way in,” Harvey said. “Parking lot underneath. We can go in through there.”

It was almost exactly like he remembered it. Major's car parked in its usual spot. Camden's shitty Ford, even shittier now that it had been 200 years and someone stripped it of the wheels, doors, and engine. The same squeaky blue door, even squeakier with nobody to oil it, creaked as he opened it.

And, as if the outside didn't look bad, the inside was even worse. This hallway used to look decent, but now it was just a veritable wreck. The ruined walls weren't bad enough, dotted with faded posters with chunks of plaster missing, revealing the brick underneath. Rubble was all over the floor, nothing more than bare concrete by now. Old cans, plastic bags, bricks, pieces of wood…where the hell had half of this junk come from anyway? And a _shopping cart?_ What the _fuck?_ Who had taken the pride of the American military and desecrated it so?

“Keep low,” Harvey said. “Who knows how many hostiles we have here.”

“I can hear _something_ above us,” Nick said. “Not sure if I like it.”

On their left, there was a staircase. Harvey knew this one well – should take them up to the main floor, to the reception area. God, it was all so familiar, but the fact everything had been ruined beyond recognition tore at him. He heard footsteps, but these weren't from a human. No, these were heavier, from metal.

“Hostile sensor reading detected,” garbled a clearly robotic voice. A skeletal being, with some form of eggshell-colored skin on certain parts, charged at them. Blue laser fire cracked out.

“Shit!” Piper yelled. “Synths!”

Harvey immediately returned fire, watching three more of these so-called “Synths” incoming. Looked like some serious backup.

“Fellow synth – destroyed.” one reported, as further blue streaks filled the air. They were doing well, but their tactics were rudimentary. Harvey could see multiple places for these things to take advantage of cover, but instead they elected to run in front of each other and stand in the open to fire.

Nick took cover behind a display case, peeking out to fire shots at the incoming synths. “What, no love for your fellow machine?!”

“Now really the time, Nick?!” Piper asked.

One group of synths down, destroyed before they could join the fight in earnest. Laser beams from behind them – they had gotten flanked by another group. “Fort Hagen is under Institute authority,” one of the synths called. “Terminating intruder.”

Five more behind them. Harvey shifted around, engaging the newcomers and taking cover behind a doorway.

“Alright, these things earned a ticket to the scrapheap!”

“Right side!” Harvey warned. “Watch the holes in the wall!”

Piper took his advice to heart, angling her fire to cover their right flank just as synths began flooding them. Two more dead ahead, two more knocked down. One round seemed to be doing a lot of these in – must be weak frames, or not designed to take a 7.62 bullet. Another round of gunfire later, and the last one fell, muttering as it hit the floor. All became quiet as the smell of gunpowder and leaking coolant filled the air.

“Didn't even break a sweat,” Nick said. “…well, not that it's an _option…”_

“You guys heard that, right?” Piper asked. “That one synth? Saying this place was… what the hell was it?”

_“Under Institute authority,”_ Harvey recited. “Yeah. What do you figure _that_ means?”

Nick sighed, reloading his pistol. “I think it means our fears were well-founded. Institute's got a hand in this kidnapping, Harvey.”

Harvey sighed, taking a deep, long breath. This wasn't anything _new._ This wasn't anything he hadn't prepared for. It was just coming to terms with the damn thing. He had heard the stories, seen the worried looks on people's faces, felt the fear. He didn't have to have lived here to know that when someone was taken by the Institute, it didn't always end well.

“Alright,” he finally said. “Let's… let's get going. If Kellogg's smart, he'll have set up a base in the command center.”

“Where's that at?” Piper asked.

“Top floor. Can't get there through these stairs, gotta find the direct access elevator.”

“Which, again, if Kellogg's smart…”

“He'll probably be defending. We'll have to fight through a lot more of these synths,” Harvey said, looking at Piper and Nick. “You two don't have to be here. If either of you want to drop out –“

“No,” Piper said, shaking her head. “I'm with you.”

Nick shook his head as well. “You're my client. This one's free of charge, especially given the circumstances.”

Well, he could hardly ask for better comrades-in-arms. He bit the inside of his mouth, nodding sharply. Time to keep moving. This floor had been cleared, apparently – only a laser turret that was easily dispatched remained as their opposition. The secondary command room, an area Harvey was more than familiar with, was just as much a mess as the rest of the building but probably even more so. The walls of computers had been demolished, turned over, and generally just provided a barrier to progress, while the tiny armory had been picked clean of anything useful long ago. The elevator going down to the sub floor no longer had a functioning announcer, crackling with each syllable.

Basic defenses had been established down here. Machine gun turret at the end of the hall, mine system. Decent setup, funnel them in. Turret went down without an issue, as it should have – thing was flimsy anyway. Two synths at the end of the hall were alerted, and under fire, Harvey defused the mine as Piper and Nick took out the synths. He had never much been down here in the past, but he was sure this part of the base probably hadn't changed much since 2077.

“Hey, if it isn't my old friend, the frozen TV dinner,” a voice said. _Kellogg. _Must have been using the PA system inherent to the building. “Last time we met, you were cozying up to the peas and apple cobbler. Sorry _your_ house has been a wreck for 200 years. But I don't need a roommate. Leave.”

“He's taunting you,” Nick reminded him. “Don't pay him any mind.”

Harvey ignored both of them. The door to the command center was coming up. He was close to Kellogg, he could just _feel_ it.

They went through the broken comm room, with Harvey checking every corner for hostiles. So far, none. For a place that seemed filled to the brim with defenses, traps and robotic guards, this was making him uneasy. What was next?

“Never expected you to come knocking on my door,” Kellogg said. “Gave you 50/50 odds of making it to Diamond City. After that? Figured the Commonwealth would chew you up like jerky. Look, you're pissed off, I get it, I _do,_ but whatever you hope to accomplish here? It is _not_ going to go your way.”

He could feel his teeth grinding against one another, the heat of anger rising in his cheeks, pure rage filling his bones. The words, he phrases, the noises of combat that ensued as they ventured further into Kellogg's den faded away. He didn't listen – didn't _want_ to anymore. Nothing else mattered to him. All he had to do was search, clear, and destroy. He would find Kellogg no matter where in this God-forsaken building he hid. He would find him and kill him.

“Okay,” Kellogg said as Harvey stood outside a maglocked door. “You made it. I'm just up ahead. My synths are standing down. Let's talk.”

The first door opened, revealing a lonely, red-illuminated corridor that took a turn left upstairs. Back up to the command room, where another door opened. Harvey cautiously stepped in, unwilling to envelop himself full in darkness. Lights flicked on, revealing Kellogg standing next to a handful of synths, all with their guns pointed at them. Harvey felt his breathing increase in pace as he stomped up to Kellogg, rage filling every fiber of his being.

“And there he is,” Kellogg said, standing with his hands up. “Most resilient man in the Commonwealth. Funny, I thought _I_ had that honor.”

“You murdering, kidnapping _psychopath,”_ Harvey shouted. “Give me back my son. Give me Shaun, _now!”_

“Right to it then, huh? Okay, fine. Your son, Shaun, great kid. A little _older_ than you may have expected, but I'm guessing you figured that out by now. But if you're hoping for a happy reunion? Ain't gonna happen, pal. Your boy's not here.”

Harvey could feel the grip on his rifle tightening into pain. If his anger continued to grow unchecked, he was afraid he'd break the stock's wood. “Then you're going to take me to him,” he growled. “Right the _fuck_ now.”

Kellogg let out an empty, hollow laugh. “Take you to him? Like I _could,_ even if I _wanted _to. Don't you _get it?_ Your son's in a place _nobody_ can reach. Shaun's safe, at home in the Institute.”

“The Institute? Then I'll find him. Nothing's going to stop me,” Harvey warned, his voice rising. “Especially not some two-bit, metal-armed, bald pompous fuck clown!”

“God, you're persistent,” Kellogg retorted. “I give you credit, it's the way a father _should_ act. The way I'd be acting if I were in your place, I like to think. Even if it _is _useless. But I think we've been talking long enough.”

“Glad we agree,” Harvey said.

The firefight was necessarily short and brutal. Harvey had raised his rifle up to his cheek faster than Kellogg could unholster his pistol, and delivered five rounds right into his chest. He might have kept firing, had Kellogg not collapsed behind a terminal and the synths began moving to engage. Harvey felt his rifle click empty as the last synth was destroyed, warbling unintelligibly as it collapsed in a pile of scrap metal and electricity.

“Good riddance,” Nick muttered. “This guy won't be hurting anyone else.”

As the smell of gunpowder faded out, Harvey felt a hand on his shoulder, turning to see Piper. “You okay, Harvey?”

“Better now.”

Nick began poking around, rummaging through Kellogg's various terminals and folders, muttering as he began typing away on a terminal that looked important. Harvey sighed, resting on the stairs. He had been on his feet for too long. Had to rest _sometime._

“Unfortunately, Kellogg wasn't all smoke and mirrors,” Nick announced. “He was telling the truth about the Institute having Shaun.”

“God, this is just getting worse and worse by the second,” Piper moaned, joining Harvey on the stairs. “I've been investigating these creeps for years. The Commonwealth's boogeyman. Sometimes they snatch people in the middle of the night, and sometimes they leave old synths behind to let us know they're there. But there's still something nobody knows…”

“Where the Institute actually _is,_” Nick concluded. “And how to get in.”

“Well, too bad for _us,_ we just killed the only man who had access.”

Piper sighed, drawing her hands out dramatically as if she were projecting a headline. “Murderer and kidnapper gets brains blown out by avenging parent. Would be a great story if we didn't have the enduring mystery of the Commonwealth to solve.”

Harvey looked up, watching Nick slowly get a jolt of insight across his face as he stood up. “Gets his brains blown out,” he repeated. “Huh… his _brains._ You know, we may not need the _man_ at all.”

“You're talking crazy here, Nick,” Piper said, arching an eyebrow. “Got a fault in the ole' subroutines?”

“Look, there's a place in Goodneighbor called the Memory Den,” Nick said. “Relive the past moments in your mind clear as the day they happened. If anyone could get a dead brain to sing, it'd be Doctor Amari, the mind behind the memories.”

“Yeah, I gotta go with Piper here,” Harvey chimed in. “Sounds crazy, Nick.”

“I know, I know, but if we can get enough gray matter to bring to Amari and find out if this is going to work…”

“Jesus, Nick!” Piper exclaimed. “Gross! Seriously?!”

Nick threw his hands up, shaking his head. “I know it's grisly, but what choice do we have? We got no leads, nothing. That old merc's brains might just have all the secrets we need.”

“Alright, fine,” Harvey muttered. “I'll do it, fuck. Whatever it takes to get Shaun back.”

Harvey didn't much admit to knowing brain surgery, but hell, couldn't be that hard. “Dude's more machine than man,” he noted, seeing various metal bits protruding from his flesh. Must have been some kind of replacement limb or something. Pacemaker? Who knew. The actual bit of brain was more like an attachment just behind his ear, kind of like a hearing aid if he didn't know any better. Either way, looked like it had enough of the good stuff on it to bring to the doc.

“Alright,” Nick said, “I have to go to the Memory Den anyway, so I'll meet you guys there. You two take your time, I think you've deserved a bit of a break, Harvey.”

“Yeah,” Harvey agreed, shoving the bloody biotic enhancement into a pocket. “Guess so.”

They left Fort Hagen just as the sky began to turn a shade of orange, stepping out onto the roof. Overhead, Harvey saw a massive airship with vertibirds flying out from it. Somebody switched on a loudspeaker as searchlights scanned the ground.

_“People of the Commonwealth,”_ the loudspeaker announced. _“Do not interfere. Our intentions are peaceful. We are the Brotherhood of Steel.”_

“I don't believe it…” Piper muttered.

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing,” Nick said.

Slowly, the airship hovered past them. The show of force was clear, and the implications were unmistakable. He didn't need to be a soldier to recognize the strong arm tactics in play here.


	4. Dangerous Minds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harvey heads to Goodneighbor, with pieces of Kellogg's brain with him.

Night was still covering their travel. Harvey didn't much like it, but he had to keep moving. Besides, Fort Hagen's surrounds didn't offer much in the way of safe bedding, and he wasn't about to spend a night inside the fort itself.

“You know,” Piper said, “the Institute has a lot of enemies. The Minutemen tangled with them once. Railroad still does. Bet you the Brotherhood did too.”

“Railroad? Don't think I've heard of them.”

Piper smirked, proud of her inside knowledge. “Supposedly, they help runaway synths escape the Institute. But they're secretive, ultra-paranoid. All I've got is a rumor. A code-phrase. Follow the Freedom Trail.”

“Hmm,” Harvey said, pausing. Highway. Might be good to get a vantage point, scope out what was ahead. “Could be helpful. What about these Minutemen?”

“They're a volunteer army,” Piper explained. “Dedicated to protecting the Commonwealth from things like the Institute. Things that make people afraid. But…they're not around anymore. A lot of petty infighting. People lost faith, and well, you can't have a volunteer army without volunteers.”

He scoffed, shaking his head. _Ain't that the truth._ Harvey remembered when the Army reintroduced the draft. It was after he had already joined, but there were a lot of soldiers under his command in Alaska that didn’t want to be there. He and Piper found an elevator, taking it to get to the highway. So far, it seemed to be holding up. Standard double-deck highway, campfire ahead on the right. Cars everywhere for cover. Somebody had picked this spot. Looked abandoned.

“So, you're pretty serious about traveling with me, huh?” Harvey asked.

“Well, yeah,” Piper replied, shrugging as she looked out at the Commonwealth sky. “I mean, you've got a pretty noble quest here, and…you seem like you're doing the right thing by people.”

He smirked, stopping from looking over the campground to join her in gazing at what was left of Boston. The moon was out in full tonight, illuminating the entire area almost as brightly as the sun itself, if with a blue tinge to everything.

“You sure manage to find your fair share of trouble, don't you?” Piper asked, playfully smiling.

“I suppose so.”

“Hey, I'm not one to judge. Honestly, it's nice to just not be doing it alone for a change. Even _before_ I met you, I've been shot at, poisoned, nearly executed… heck, until recently, they called the lock-up in Diamond City the 'Piper Suite.'”

Harvey laughed, the first time in a long while that he had done so. It felt good to actually laugh again. “Guess the execution didn't take, huh?”

“Thank god. Children of Atom, but… I'll tell that story later, it's a hell of a long one.” She suddenly turned to him, gazing intensely at him. “Honestly, being out here with you? I feel like I'm just getting started on another.”

He found himself smiling back, and almost as if he had never seen her before, Harvey noticed her black hair glistened in the moonlight, outlining her face as a shadow drawn by her cap crept across it. It reminded him of his wife, Shannon, before… well, all of this. _No,_ he thought, pushing the idea out of his head. _Not again. Can't get attached._

“We should get moving,” he announced, turning around to head back to the elevator. Traveling through the abandoned, dead town below them would take his mind off of this anyway. Turned out, he was right. Lot of danger down here. All sorts of places raiders could hide. Like a familiar song and dance, he began heading to the right, intent on clearing each house and making sure it had no hostiles, human or otherwise. Someone had evidently been here. Platforms spanned rooftops and ruined buildings full of holes, though given the flooding, it was probably necessary.

“Mirelurks, direct to your doorstep,” Piper commented. “Yeesh.”

“Mirelurks?”

Piper frowned, furrowing her brow. “Yeah, you know, the uh… crawly things that like to chomp down on people's legs?”

“Can't say I'm familiar, no.”

Growling came from the flooded waters. That wasn't normal.

“Oh shit,” Piper said. “Watch your fingers! Ferals!”

Harvey broke for high ground, heading up to a rooftop that had access from the ground. A group of feral ghouls – zombies more like if Harvey were naming them – charged after him. Carefully aimed, calm shots sent them falling back to their watery graves. Piper's pistol rang out on his left. More groans and screams. If they weren't careful, they could get swarmed here.

“Dammit!” Piper yelled. “I'm out of ammo!”

Harvey shifted to his left, taking out a feral that was dangerously close to Piper for comfort. He handed her a knife that he kept on his person, returning to keeping down the ones who were closing in on them. Better to keep distance between them and the ferals. Another magazine of ammo spent, with just as many killed ferals lying around them.

“Alright,” Harvey said, “we gotta change this up.”

Piper shrugged, confused. “What do you mean?”

“We're gonna get you a rifle, and I'm going to teach you how to use it so you can defend yourself better.”

Her face dulled, and she let out a small, defeated sigh. “You… you don't have to go to that kind of trouble, really, it's-”

“Piper, I'm not about to let you get killed because you ran out of ammo. Besides, we'll be safer if we both have rifles.” He slung his M14 on his shoulder, preparing to start looking. One of these old places must have had a spare rifle nobody was using. “Look, it'll be fun.”

Piper shook her head, following Harvey as they began searching the Commonwealth for a rifle for her. It ended up taking the better half of two hours, and there were definite shortcomings he could see with the plan. For one, it was a heavy as hell rifle – an old German G3, how it got here he had no fucking clue. But, it was a rifle, it took the same ammo as his M14, and he was familiar enough with it to be able to show Piper how to effectively use it.

By pure luck, he had managed to find what looked like an original strap for the G3, still fixed to the weapon. Seemed nobody had seen fit to try and modify this thing since some poor German brought this over. Four magazines as well, plenty of ammo for Piper to carry. A quick stop to a traveling merchant got them the necessary ammo to load up, and extra to refill one of the magazines. So, twenty rounds to give Piper the basics. Not too bad.

He selected a relatively flat-looking area, gathering up bottles and cans to set them against a decaying fence as dawn broke on Boston. Not quite Army basic, but it would do.

“The idea's simple,” he said. “You want your grip tight, but not too tight. Otherwise, you can wear yourself out.”

“Jesus, Harvey,” Piper complained, constantly shifting the rifle in her hands. “This thing weighs a ton.”

He corrected her form, gently relaxing her death grip one the handguard. “Just focus on the sights. It'll kick hard. When you go to fire, squeeze the trigger, don't pull.”

She frowned, blinking. “What the hell does _that_ mean?”

“Smooth, constant pressure,” he instructed. “Don't just jerk your finger back.”

Piper glanced at him, squaring her shoulders up and aiming at one of the cans. Just like he had instructed her not to, she pulled the trigger. With a bang, the rifle kicked back, and her shot went wide.

“You pulled it,” Harvey said. “OK, let me do something really quick.”

Making sure she had taken her hand off the grip, Harvey removed the magazine from her rifle, ejecting the chambered round as well. Now cleared, he allowed Piper to take ownership of the rifle again.

“Uh, hey, Harvey?” Piper said, cocking a skeptical eyebrow at him. “I can't shoot if the gun's not _loaded.”_

Harvey nodded, pulling out a bottle cap and putting it on the rifle's receiver. “I know. Squeeze the trigger without moving this.”

He stepped back, watching Piper's confusion grow. Shaking her head, she shouldered the rifle again, pulling the trigger again. Her eyes followed the bottle cap to the ground, and once again she looked back at Harvey with no clue what he was getting at. Harvey said nothing as he replaced the bottle cap, nodding for her to do it again. When the bottle cap fell off a second time, she started to understand the point of the exercise.

“Okay,” she muttered, waiting for Harvey to put the cap back on. “I think I get your game here, Blue.”

He smirked, but not for long. Didn't want her to think he _liked_ the nickname, after all. With a smile on her face, she began squeezing the trigger properly, cheering at her own success. Now that she had basic technique down, time to load the rifle back up and get her shooting actual bullets.

“Deep breaths,” he said. “In and out. Hold before you fire, breathe out when the shot leaves.”

It took her a few shots to figure it out, but she did eventually get the hang of it. By the time the magazine had been expended – and all the cans had successfully been destroyed – Piper was smiling wide, thrilled with her progress as she turned to Harvey.

“Hey, listen,” she said, “don't pat yourself on the back too hard. I've always been a quick learner.”

He laughed. “Oh, have you? Well, you're a lot better than the kids I trained at Fort Stewart. Picked up on it quicker, too.”

“Good to know if I ever come across a 200-year old ghoul you trained, I can brag about that,” she said. “You wanna go back on the road?”

“Yeah, let's get to it.”

The rising sun turned the sky from red to orange, casting the light into his eyes as they headed back through Boston. Or, at least the outskirts of it. There was still a decent amount of woodland between them and their destination. Harvey wasn't sure where the Memory Den was, but Piper had a decent idea of it, and that was good enough. A place called Goodneighbor.

“You know, Diamond City wasn't always our home,” Piper said out of the blue.

“What, you and your sister's?” Harvey asked.

“Yeah. We grew up way out in the Commonwealth. Dad was part of the local militia.” She smiled wryly, remembering fondly her father. “Heh, 'keeping the raiders off our backs and the mirelurks out of our latrines,' as he'd describe it.”

She looked down, smiling again, but her smile quickly faded, and her tone became remorseful. “Well… one day, our Dad turns up dead.” Piper shook her had, as if the anger would go away. “His captain, _asshole_ named Mayburn, claims raiders must have gotten him on watch. Well, I didn't buy it. I start making inquiries.”

“What happened?”

Piper's anger receded, and her face relaxed. “Turns out, the captain, he'd sold out. Thought he wasn't getting paid enough to babysit the town, so he was going to let raiders in and sack the place, take a cut of the profits. My dad found out, was going to turn Mayburn in, but… well, Mayburn got to him first. I wasn't about to let him get away with murder.”

Piper smirked, stretching her arms out wide. “So, I papered the entire town with posters, 'Wanted for Gross Dereliction of Duty – Captain Mayburn'. The town threw Mayburn out on his ass and were dug in when a _very_ surprised group of raiders finally showed.”

“Piper, you _saved_ those people, you know that, right?”

“No.” Piper said flatly. “Those people saved themselves. Because they knew the _truth._ But hey, I-I'm sorry if I've been rambling. I just get… _fired up_ sometimes. It's just nice to talk to someone who… who actually seems to _get it,_ you know?”

Harvey nodded. “Yeah, I get what you're saying. Hey, I'm glad we're traveling together, you know?”

“Me too. Glad I stumbled upon you.”

The sun was getting higher. If all went well, they could get into downtown Boston before noon.

* * *

The approach to Goodneighbor was… certainly something. Someone – maybe a roving Brotherhood of Steel patrol, given the lack of casings and prevalent laser burns – had wiped out a few Super Mutant outposts along the way, leaving their path mostly clear. The walls of Goodneighbor were built up, cobbled together from wood, scrap steel, and a neon sign lit up the entrance, signifying that this was certainly Goodneighbor. It looked like the seedy side of Boston that Harvey never much went to back then.

Almost immediately upon walking through the door, a grungy-looking mercenary stood in front of them, blocking their path.

“Hey, hold up there,” he said, lighting up a cigarette. “First time in Goodneighbor? Can't go walking around without _insurance.”_

“Unless it's 'keep-dumb-assholes-away-from-me' insurance,” Harvey said flatly, “I'm not interested.”

Undeterred, the man smirked. “Now don't be like that, I think you'll like what I have to offer! You hand over everything in those pockets, or 'accidents' start happening to ya. Big, bloody 'accidents'.”

Harvey tensed up, ready to draw blood on this two-bit loser if necessary. He was already sizing him up – switchblade, didn't look like he had a good feel for the balance of it. Though, given he had the knife and Harvey didn't, that was a problem already. Thug could get some good slices in. If Piper was quick on the draw with her pistol, that'd help, but if it got into a grapple, he wasn't confident she could take the shot without hitting him too.

“Whoa, whoa, time out,” a raspy voice said. “Someone steps through the gate first time, they're a guest. You lay off the extortion crap.”

He looked to the source of the new voice – it was a wrinkly, old ghoul, dressed in an old red Revolutionary War-era outfit. What the fuck was with _this_ getup?

“What do you care?” the thug demanded of the newcomer. “He ain't one of us!”

“No love for your mayor, Finn? I said let 'em go.”

Finn furrowed his brow, stepping right up to the so-called 'mayor'. “You're soft, Hancock. You keep letting outsiders walk all over us, one day there'll be a new mayor.”

Hancock turned his palms up, giving off an air of debonair. “Come on, man, this is me we're talking about. Let me tell you something.” Distracting Finn by putting a hand on his shoulder, Hancock moved his other hand to grab a knife, stabbing Finn several times in the stomach. Finn fell to the ground, choking on his own blood. Behind him, Piper gasped as Harvey took a step back. “Now why'd you have to go and say _that,_ huh? Breaking my heart over here.” He shook his head, looking over at Harvey “You alright, brother?”

“You killed him!” Harvey said.

“Got a good pair of eyes on ya,” Hancock replied. “I think you'll fit in fine here. Goodneighbor's of the people, for the people, you feel me? Everybody's welcome.”

God, as if he hadn't heard this before. As if he hadn't sworn an oath to defend these words. “Sounds like anarchy,” he replied, knowing that these people had twisted those sacred words around.

“The best kind of anarchy,” Hancock said. “Embrace it, and maybe one day you'll call this little slice of chaos home. So long as you remember who's in charge.”

Feeling he had made his point, Hancock left, leaving Finn to bleed out on the old brick.

“Jeez, I hate it when he does stuff like that,” Piper said, shivering audibly. “Guess it's time to… go out on the town.”

They rounded a corner, bringing them to what Piper called “main street”, showing Harvey the local bar – the Third Rail – and almost right in front of them, the Memory Den. It looked like it was built out of the remains of a former strip joint, if Harvey didn't know any better. The walls advertised live girls, though he figured those were probably more than a little outdated. All around Goodneighbor, men in dirty suits roamed the streets armed with Thompsons, probably raided from a Vault somewhere.

The Memory Den itself was the textbook definition of “seedy”. The lights had an odd purple hue, barely illuminating the brick hallway that led into the memory pods. Nick was in here already, exchanging a brief hello and nothing else as he led them into the main room. At the head of the room sat a woman on a lounge chair, wearing a feathered jacketed over a provocative dress.

“My, my,” she said, looking over Nick. “Mister Valentine. I thought you had forgotten about little ole' me.”

“May have walked out of the Den, Irma, but I'd never walk out on you,” he said, almost romantically if Harvey didn't know better.

“Hmm,” Irma said, smirking. “Amari's downstairs, you big flirt.”

Nick nodded, heading to the left. “Thank you, Irma, truly.”

Downstairs, they walked into a room lit almost too brightly, with two memory pods inside it. A woman with short black hair was bent over a computer screen, engrossed completely in her work.

“Doctor Amari?” Nick said, knocking on the doorjamb.

“Yes?” the woman said, turning to face them. “I take it this isn't a social call?”

Harvey stepped forward, opting to take the lead. “We need your help, doctor. I need the memories from a man named Kellogg, but he's dead.”

“I know it's asking for a miracle, Amari, but you've pulled off the impossible before,” Nick said.

The second the words had escaped Nick's mechanical lips, Amari's face twisted in confusion, and she furrowed her brow. “Are you two mad?! Putting aside the fact that you're asking me to _defile a corpse,_ you do realize that the memory simulators require intact, _living_ brains to function?”

“Please,” Harvey pleaded. “Nick told me you're the only one who could make this work.”

“This dead brain had inside knowledge of the Institute, Amari,” Nick said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “The biggest scientific secret of the Commonwealth. You need this, and so do we.”

Amari sighed, shaking her head. “Fine. I'll take a look, but no guarantees. Do you… have it with you?”

Harvey handed over the biotic enhancement, wiping off the still-fresh blood. “Here's the best I could pull.”

“This isn't a brain,” Amari said, examining it closely. “This is… wait, that's the hippocampus! And this thing attached to it… a neural interface?”

Nick groaned. “Those circuits look awfully familiar…”

“I'm not surprised,” Amari said, still intensely looking over the enhancement. “From what I've seen, all Institute technology has a similar architecture.”

“So… the brain is still good, right?” Harvey asked.

“Possibly. There's no sign of decay, the tech is probably preserving the tissue somehow. Injecting some kind of preservative to keep it stable, maybe. But, there's no way to access the memories without a compatible port.”

“You're talking about _me,_ right?” Nick said. “I'm an old synth. If the Institute built me out of similar parts, we might have an in.”

Amari sighed pensively, pursing her lips. “There could be long term side effects. I don't even know where to _begin_ with listing the risks…”

Nick shook his head, taking off his overcoat to reveal a tattered white shirt and gray tie. “Don't bother, I don't need to hear them. Plug me in, doc.”

Putting a hand on Nick's shoulder, or the best approximation he had for it anyway, Harvey looked Nick dead in the eyes. “I appreciate this, Nick. Truly, I do.”

“You can thank me when we've found your son,” Nick muttered. “Alright, let's do this.”

“Alright, Mister Valentine,” Amari said, gesturing to a nearby chair. “Whenever you're ready, sit down.”

“If I start cackling like an old, grizzled mercenary, pull me out, okay?”

Amari said nothing, getting to work putting him together. “I need you to keep talking to me. Are you feeling any different?”

“There's a lot of static,” Nick said, starting to sound panicked. “Flashes… I… I can't make sense of any of it, doc.”

“That's what I was afraid of,” Amari said. “The mnemonic impressions are encoded. It appears the Institute has one last fail safe. There's a lock on the memories in the implant.”

Harvey could feel his own breath increasing rapidly, struggling to keep his composure. So close to finding Shaun, but… so far away, too. “Tell me you have a way past this, Doctor,” he said.”

“The encryption is too strong for a single mind, but… what about two? We load both you and Mister Valentine into the memory loungers. Run your cognitive functions in parallel.”

“Do it,” Harvey said immediately. “I'll do anything. I need to find my son.”

What happened next could not be put into words even if Harvey could find them. He remembered lowering himself into the memory pod. He remembered hearing Doctor Amari tell him that he could be in there for a while. He remembered being told that stepping into Kellogg's memories might disorient him, and for a while, it did. He watched in third person as Kellogg went through his life, but Harvey didn't find himself caring about the shit life Kellogg had grown up in. He didn't care about the man's supposedly abusive parents, the remains of San Francisco, or the first job he had ever taken.

All he cared about was the day his son was taken. He watched those memories fly through, until Shaun was taken to the Institute. He watched Kellogg talk to a man in all black, hand over Shaun to him, and then in a flash, they both disappeared. Fucking teleporters. The Institute had managed to unlock the secrets of teleportation. Who would have ever guessed it?

“How do you feel?” Amari asked as he was brought out of the memory pod.

“Next time I have to watch somebody's life story, I want popcorn,” he muttered.

“Cognizant enough to joke. You're probably out of critical condition. Are you… ready to talk about what happened in there?”

Harvey sighed, closing his eyes. “Virgil. Teleportation. Need to find Virgil to find out about the other. Whatever the Glowing Sea is, perfect hiding spot. Make them think twice about following him.”

“Lot of radiation out there,” Piper chimed in. “Uh, maybe we shouldn't go running around with just the clothes on our backs?”

“He must be using the radiation of the Glowing Sea as sort of a cloak,” Amari theorized. “If he found a way to survive out there, then you have to as well. All the Rad-X and Radaway you can carry, maybe more.”

Harvey opened his eyes, trying to maintain a neutral face. “Power armor. I need some. I was trained in it before the War, if I can get a solid suit of it, that would be enough.”

“Be safe out there, and good luck,” Doctor Amari said. “I unplugged Nick first, he's waiting for you upstairs.”

Harvey began working in his head where he could find a working suit of power armor. Lot of old models still floating around, probably. He'd have to start checking the old military bases and checkpoints. Maybe the National Guard armory would have one? At least one of those locations would have a set in relatively decent working order.

“Hey, Nick,” Harvey said. “Ready to go?”

“Yeah,” he replied, getting out of the chair. “An old man, synth detective, and a journalist. Sounds like the beginnings of a crappy joke.”

Either way, the next step was clear. Harvey had already formulated the plan, if only for himself. Find power armor, and then walk to this Glowing Sea by himself. He wasn't sure if another set of power armor could be found, and if it could, whether it'd be enough to protect Piper. Better he do it solo, find his own path. That way, only one of them would be at risk.

“You know,” Piper joked as they approached a steel barricade. “I really like the 'doom and gloom' aesthetic these guys have going on. Really ties the whole place together.”

Apparently not much a fan of jokes, a raider spotted them and opened fire, forcing them to take cover behind an old car. Harvey brought up his rifle, resting his elbow against the rusted out fender and opening fire. One raider down. Voices from a handful of others just beyond the barricade. On his left, Piper juggled her rifle in her hands, trying to find a way to comfortably hold it and take cover at the same time.

“Give up now! I'll make it quick!” one of them called. Harvey could hear heavy boots stomping on wood, and looked up to see one running across some kind of scaffolding. He spotted them and ducked behind cover, gesturing for others to join him. Check back at the entrance to the barricade showed one with a shotgun peeking out. Harvey ducked back behind the car just as buckshot flew over his head.

On his right, Nick was peeking out from cover as well, popping off shots with his revolver. “This really the last mug you wanna see?”

Bullets pinged off their car in reply. Sounded like a heavy-barreled weapon. Harvey looked back around to see one of the raiders with a Chinese Type 81 light machine gun. God, Chinese weapons around every corner, huh? He didn't remember _that_ many Chinese weapons being seized in the Anchorage front. Though, come to think of it, he had never overseen that kind of thing anyway.

The raider with the shotgun took a round to the face for his second peek out, courtesy of Nick. Piper and Harvey began returning fire as well, cutting off incoming reinforcements on the scaffolding. The machine gunner was still an issue, one Harvey resolved in short order after waiting for him to reload.

“Fall back! Fall back!” one of the raiders shouted, and after another clatter of assault rifle fire, the shots began to die down as the raiders retreated. Harvey broke from cover first, charging around the barricade to sweep and clear the opposite side just in case they were trying to pull a trick. Looked like they were serious about abandoning their position – they had even left their ammo and wounded behind.

“Really held you own there,” Piper said, slinging her rifle on her back. “Still could have warned me about this rifle.”

“I was about to say,” Nick said, holstering his pistol and lighting up. “Where'd you even get that, anyway?”

Piper smiled, gesturing to Harvey. “Harvey found it in a ruin, said it was better if we both had rifles. And… well, so far it's working out okay.”

Harvey checked his ammo levels, reinserting the magazine when he saw it was still good. “We should keep going. It'll be dark soon.”

“Scared of the dark, Blue?” Piper asked.

“No, but I don't have a light. And unless Nick's hiding night vision in those eyes of his…”

Nick scoffed, shaking his head. “I wish. That'd make detective work a lot easier.”

Time to get back to moving. Boston's narrow streets were filled with junk, piles of dirt, dust and debris all over the streets. How had some of this paper even survived? Were they remnants of past governments trying to reform what America once had? Every image of Boston tore at him. It was like watching everything he loved slowly crumble into nothing.

A lonely bridge provided their path over the river. The National Guard Armory and training center was about a mile north of here, give or take. Maybe a bit less, given how many buildings had been deleted by the nuclear strikes. Across the river, there were row houses, old buildings that he recognized when he and Shannon had been looking for a home here. If the Army hadn't provided him with the house in Sanctuary, this was pretty close to the area they were looking at.

“Is that a fuckin' ship over there?” Harvey asked, pointing to the skyline.

“Looks like it,” Piper said.

Tossing his cigarette over the side, Nick cleared his throat. “I've heard of that place. Uh, best to avoid that part of town. Bots over there are a little on the eccentric side.”

Harvey shook his head. May as well listen to Nick. No time to be distracted anyway. He had a goal, a purpose. Nothing would stop him from finding Shaun, and right now, tracking this Virgil through the Glowing Sea was priority one.


	5. The Glowing Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harvey's path to finding his son takes him to dangerous places.

Like a lot of things, the National Guard armory was familiar, and so different at the same time. It was night by the time they had arrived at it, and aside from a troublesome machine gun turret that no longer recognized Harvey as friendly, the exterior had no hostiles that he could see. Skeletons of long-dead National Guardsmen scattered the front, alongside the bones of forgotten cars and, perhaps more disturbingly, the bodies of civilians. People must have rushed here before the bombs fell, either for refuge or to raid it for a weapon in the final hours of their lives.

“God, to see this place like this…” Harvey muttered.

Nick put a hand on his shoulder, trying to reassure him. Did he know it wasn't working? “Hey, I know it's tough to see…”

“Do you, Nick, do you?” he snapped, whipping around to face the synth. “Everything I've seen since I got out of that fucking vault has turned _everything I know_ upside down!”

“Believe it or not, I do,” Nick retorted, genuine sadness in his voice. “Nick Valentine – the _real_ one, not the metal and plastic skin you see here – he was a Pre War cop, a detective. I didn't get this personality just because the Institute decided to make me watch a bunch of old movies.”

Harvey closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose as he tried to figure this out. “So…fucking, what, you-”

“I guess he signed up for some mind examination thing. All I know is it's…” Nick paused, suddenly looking down. He was being evasive. “An old case. But that's neither here nor there. He was in the Institute's mind banks when I came around, so… here I am. All I know is I have memories just like yours, of before the bombs dropped, and then all of a sudden I'm in a back alley dumpster wondering why the hell everything's so damn dirty.”

“Sorry, Nick,” Harvey said, calming down as he regulated his breathing again. “I… guess I didn't think about it too hard.”

Nick shrugged, pursing his lips. “Eh, no hard feelings. Book covers and all that, you know?”

The noise of a door creaking open drew Harvey's attention away from Nick, to see Piper creeping into the armory itself. “Hey, uh, not to break up the pity party,” she said, “but we should check this place.”

“Piper's right,” Harvey said. “Alright, standard breach and clear, everyone. We don't know who – or what – could be in here.”

Nick pulled out his revolver, spinning the chamber. Piper already had her rifle out, and Harvey unslung his as well, leading the charge inside. The front room had a collapsed ceiling, the upper floor having caved in who knew how long ago. A ghoul wearing an officer's uniform lie in the middle of the pile of wood, apparently dead. Was that Major Gordon? Hard to tell with the radiation. God, this entire place was just a mess. This didn't deserve it.

Stepping into the next room, they were almost immediately beset on all sides by ghouls. Each one wore a uniform he was all too familiar with. He couldn't see the name tags, not that he _wanted_ to, but he was sure each one might have been a friend. Lot of his old buddies had stayed in after Anchorage. He knew at least one that had transferred to a position here, meant to visit him the day the bombs dropped. Either way, the main room was now clear. Side room, it was a records room before all this happened.

Lot of ghoul bodies in here. Someone else had been in this building before.

“Damn,” Piper muttered. “Look at how many she took out with her…”

Dead woman, dressed in what looked like repurposed military gear. Harvey checked her body, found a pair of dog tags. Knight Astlin. She had a holotape on her person, too. He'd have to check this out later.

“Alright, this room's clear,” Harvey said. “Let's keep going.”

His first assessment had been wrong. The entire upper floor was essentially gone, with only small bits of wood along the walls offering a solid platform to walk. The way out to the barracks had been locked, but he knew Major Gordon kept his password in his desk. Thankfully, a path to his office was available, and he managed to retrieve it and make his way back down without much issue.

“If there's as many in the barracks as there were in here,” Harvey warned as he opened the lock, “be ready for a fight.”

“Always am,” Nick said.

“I can think of better ways to spend an evening, but…”

The door to the barracks began to open. Personally, Harvey thought the idea of the barracks having a “scenic” glass hallway between the buildings was a stupid idea, but hey, nobody asked First Sergeants for their opinions on building bases anyway. Two ghouls, neither of these military, stood in the scenic hallway and both were easily dispatched.

Inside the barracks, though, it was like seventeen bombs had gone off. Someone had made a hasty attempt at building defenses, against what Harvey didn't much feel like speculating. Soldiers and civilians both must have died inside here, judging by the variety of clothing he saw on the ghouls. If he were inclined to look hard enough as they fell, maybe one of them was his buddy Ramirez. Either way, the power armor wasn't in the barracks. Left only one place for it. The barracks was cleared, and now they could go back outside.

Right to where Harvey collapsed on his hands and knees. His M14 clattered to his side, bouncing on the dirt. His breathing became heavy, and without much he could do about it, his dinner came back up. Before he was conscious of it, Piper was right next to him, hands on his back and trying to make sure he was okay.

“Blue?” she asked, concern filling her voice. Was she actually panicked? “You okay there?”

Harvey tried to answer, but found words failing him. Each breath felt like he had just been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer. Nick had joined Piper in pulling him up, getting him back on his feet again. Piper, he had never seen Piper this worried before, but Nick looked positively terrified.

“Hey, slow down, big guy,” Nick said, easing him onto a nearby bench. “Deep breaths.”

He shut his eyes, trying to block out the world if only for a little while longer. Unfortunately, he was all too aware of the stench of death around him, the gunpowder still burning in his rifle, Piper's held breath waiting to see if Harvey was alright.

“I'm fine,” he said. “Just… lot of friends. I can't get used to shooting men wearing my uniform.”

“Oh jeez,” Piper muttered. “You knew those guys in there?”

Harvey shook his head, taking a deep breath. “No, not all of them. Not personally. But enough. Like I said, it's the uniform. I…I can't get past it.” Getting off the bench, Harvey rolled his shoulders, picking his rifle up off the ground. He'd have to clean it later. Might have gotten dirt in the action. “Alright. Armory. Let's go.”

The armory itself was a small bunker, and upon entering it, he could tell this was going to be a problem. Someone had set laser tripwires all over it, and Harvey knew damn well what for. There was a sentrybot stored here, specifically to defend against intrusions and stealing power armor. Fuck, he'd have to disable all of these.

“You two stay there,” he said. “Can't risk triggering the sentrybot, thing will rip us to shreds.”

“Okay,” Piper agreed.

“Sounds like a plan. We'll keep watch in case something happens.”

Slowly, Harvey began knocking out the tripwires, taking out the Army's defenses one by one. He could see the power armor just in front of him in the room, but there was a minor problem. Wasn't a full suit. Must have been one in for maintenance or something. Alright, well, the frame still looked good. Missing left arm, right leg. No helmet, that was a problem too.

“Good news and bad news,” Harvey called back. “Good news, found some power armor.”

“Can't wait to hear the bad news,” Nick replied.

“Not a full suit. Need to go to Fort Strong.”

“Nowhere else closer?” Piper asked. “I'd kill to do a story on Fort Strong, but I don't think Super Mutants are much the interview type…”

Harvey shook his head, looking over what was left of the power armor. “Wish there was. Unless one of you has a line on a full suit somewhere.”

He checked his Pip-Boy. It was getting late. The fighting and finding the armor had taken a lot out of all of them. Thankfully, the armory wasn't that terrible of a place to sleep, not with the bedrolls they had. Besides, it wasn't the barracks full of dead ghouls. In the morning, they'd step off to Fort Strong. Just one more trek on his path.

* * *

6:45 AM. Boston looked more depressing than usual, even with the sun rising and casting a dull yellow glow over the land. To get to Fort Strong, they'd have to follow the highway, or at least what remained of it. It was fairly close to Boston Airport, which seemed to be about where this Brotherhood of Steel hung out at too. Before Nick and Piper stirred, he had taken the time to listen to the dead woman's holotape. It seemed she was a Brotherhood of Steel knight, a Tara Astlin. Seems this airship they had wasn't the first time they'd ventured into this area. She reported her mission, serial, and gave a final assessment on her position, which was unfortunately untenable. She went down fighting, like any decent soldier should.

He'd have to find a way to get these tags back to the Brotherhood. No doubt they'd want to know what happened to this soldier. They probably had only reported her as MIA, not KIA since there was no way for them to know. Piper and Nick were waking up. Time to get moving. As usual, Harvey led the way, heading down the path to start following the highway. Just ahead of them, there was a cluster of satellite arrays, probably early warning radar. His Pip-Boy picked up a distress signal. Odd – it had no words, just a single tone.

“What's that noise?” Nick asked. “Pip-Boy on the fritz?”

“No, distress signal,” Harvey said. “Sounds like someone's in trouble.”

Piper looked around, shielding her eyes from the sun. “I-I don't see anyone,” she said.

Harvey looked to the satellite array, spotting built-up structures of some kind. Not pre-war, no, someone had built these after. Too big for people. Must have been Super Mutants. “Super Mutants might have them. We should help.”

Nick and Piper looked to the satellites as well. Behind him, he could hear Piper unslinging her rifle. She was already getting pretty gung-ho about picking fights. He admired that about her, even _if_ her cockiness almost got her killed a few times.

“Looks like a pretty standard Super Mutant locale,” Harvey said. “We have the advantage of surprise and sunlight. Sun will be in their eyes if we maintain our attack from this angle. They don't know how many we have, we can play that too.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Nick said. “Hey, any chance when we're done, _I_ could get a rifle too? Feeling a little underarmed with this police special here…”

Harvey chuckled, checking to make sure he had a round chambered. “Super Mutants seem to like hanging on to Chinese assault rifles. If you see one, feel free to pick it up.”

By his count, there were at least eight Super Mutants milling around. Almost none of them seemed to be on alert, watching for potential incursions. Harvey opted to start the firefight, gesturing for Nick and Piper to find good spots to lay down fire from. Once they were in position, he started shooting. The Super Mutants had been scattered around the area, across walkways suspended between the satellite arrays. First two shots landed square in the Super Mutant's chest, sending him falling to the ground. Almost immediately, the others responded, drawing guns and searching for the source of Harvey's fire.

“You killed my _brother!”_ one of them shouted.

“Hope you like them big and dumb!” Piper shouted, her rifle beginning to bark.

Bullets pinged off of the bus Harvey was using for cover. Somebody had a shotgun, but apparently didn't realize shotguns tended to work better at close range. Ah, there we go, another Super Mutant had figured out rifles were a good idea.

“Human time is done!” one of the mutants shouted. “This is the age of the Super Mutant!”

Nick started flanking left, moving around the supports of a satellite array to get a better angle on the Super Mutants. Harvey and Piper kept up their fire, making sure the mutants were still focused front.

“Piper!” Harvey yelled above the gunfire as he reloaded. “Shift right! I'll cover you!”

“Got it!” Piper broke from cover, sprinting behind a fallen satellite. The mutants hadn't seen – good. Nick's pistol started firing again, killing a Super Mutant that had found a machine gun somewhere. Numbers had thinned down a good amount. Four Supers, two of which didn't have any idea what was going on. He heard Piper's rifle open up again, knocking down another one. That made things easier.

“Stupid human! Stop moving!” a Super Mutant shouted. More fire from all around. Another Super Mutant scream, killed by either Nick or Piper. Hard to tell. Another five rounds fired from Harvey's rifle killed the second-to-last. Final one knocked down, falling off the scaffolding and hitting the ground hard.

“Cease fire!” Harvey shouted, uneasily waiting for the end of combat. If nobody else started shooting at them, all good. Ten, then twenty seconds passed. No more gunshots. “All clear,” he called. “Good work, you two!”

Time to see where this person was who needed to be rescued. If he fell off this makeshift scaffolding, it would hurt more than a little. “Fan out,” he ordered. “I'm thinking we're looking for a body here.”

“Eh, what's left of one anyway,” Nick muttered.

It took the better part of twenty minutes, but Piper managed to find the source of the distress signal. Another Brotherhood of Steel soldier, this one a Scribe Faris according to his tags.

“Jeez,” Piper sad sadly. “Crawled all this way up here just to die…”

“Super Mutants might not have known he was here,” Harvey said. “No shots here.”

Might be another one out there, if the Brotherhood dispatched recon teams the same way the Army did. Might be a third, or fourth body. Faris was still unaccounted for. Unfortunately, he'd have to keep looking later. Fort Strong was next.

“Real shame about these two,” Nick muttered as they started heading out. “I don't exactly have a lot of love for the Brotherhood, but nobody deserves to die scared and alone like this.”

“Damn straight,” Harvey said. “We can look for answers later. Gotta get to Fort Strong.”

* * *

They arrived at Fort Strong that evening. He could see fires burning on the island itself. Somebody must be living here, or recently set something ablaze. Harvey wasn't much a fan of fighting in a built-up area at night, especially when he couldn't tell who or what had decided to inhabit the area. For now, the checkpoint served as a temporary night stay. It wasn't comfortable by any means, but Harvey had long ago accepted that he would be uncomfortable for a long time.

Morning brought the typical recon routine in. Scout forward, check the area, see what could be seen. Super Mutants had inhabited the area. Probably thought the thing was named after them or something similar.

“Another morning dancing with Super Mutants,” Piper muttered when Harvey reported back to her and Nick. “You really know how to treat a girl to a good time, don't you?”

“There's power armor in there,” Harvey explained. “Has to be. If not…”

“Well, no time like the present to get going,” Nick said, flicking away his cigarette.

The trio crossed the bridge to the island fort, spotting three Super Mutants sitting around a campfire, eating. Easy enough kill. He and Piper could knock out two, and he was confident enough in his target acquisition abilities to get the third before he could react. Harvey relayed the plan to Nick and Piper, and then put it into motion Like he predicted, the first two went down quick, and the third almost never knew what hit him. The ruined buildings all were clear – unless you counted having radioactive barrels in them for whatever nebulous reason – and all that was left to clear was the armory, where the power armor had to be.

Upon entering the armory, Piper made a disgusted groan, putting a hand to her mouth. “Christ,” she muttered. “Why do these Super Mutants always _do_ this?”

The Super Mutants, like they typically seemed to do, hung bags of meat and blood from the ceiling, from flagpoles, basically anywhere they had a horizontal surface to. It made him grind his teeth in anger, seeing these monsters desecrate a sacred American institution like this. He scoffed, shaking his head through the smell of rotting meat. As if they had any idea what America truly _was._ He had to clear them out, cleanse this place of their dishonor. It seemed the three outside had been the only ones, as the armory itself was devoid of any Super Mutants.

There, in the basement, he found it. The rest of the power armor he needed, and even spare parts if he really wanted it. It was like every prayer he had made since losing Shaun had finally been answered. Harvey took off his daypack, handing it off for Piper to carry. He unlocked the rear of the torso, opening the power armor for him to step inside. Like every other suit, it fit like a glove. Excellent. Feeling the armor envelop him, Harvey turned back to Piper and Nick.

“Let's go get my son back.”

* * *

The two suits were brought back to Sanctuary, where Harvey had managed to rig together a power armor maintenance station. It took all of his knowledge and skill from the Army, but he managed to repair, replace and recondition the power armor and restore it to its former glory.

“So,” Piper muttered, looking over the result of a week's work. “I might be a bit on the _needy_ side, but I don't think two can fit in there.”

“You're right,” he said, stepping back to look at the armor. “I'm going alone.”

“What?” Nick asked. “Are you _sure?_ Glowing Sea's a dangerous place.”

Harvey nodded. “I don't have the luxury of time here. The Institute has to know that Kellogg is dead by now. They've likely sent another one of their lackeys after Virgil. That leaves me with no time to find a suit for Piper, and… no offense, Nick, but I don't know how the radiation out there will affect you. I can't lose two of my friends in one trip. I have to do this alone.”

Silence fell as Piper and Nick exchanged looks. Harvey knew that they wouldn't be able to change his mind. He said his goodbyes, hugging Piper and shaking Nick's metal hand, stepping into the power armor to begin his trek. Since he didn't much like the idea of irradiating the only M14 he had found thus far, he had taken a Type 56 off of a dead raider, along with the magazines and ammo for his trip into the Glowing Sea.

Once more, he was alone.

* * *

He honestly didn't think there was a way for the Commonwealth to get more depressing. How could a destroyed Boston, a decimated American military, and shooting American servicemen _not_ be the worst he had ever seen? As it turned out, watching the ground slowly die even further, the trees become little more than jagged, broken sticks poking out of the ground, and listening to his Geiger counter slowly tick up, indicating the increase in radiation. The power armor would protect him, but still, he needed to take some Rad-X and keep an eye on his radiation levels. All of this just combined to show him how truly and terribly lost the Commonwealth was. These were direct nuclear weapon hits, and they had wrecked this part of Boston entirely.

Impossibly enough, there were still feral ghouls roaming about here. As the soil slowly turned yellow, an indication of the radiation inherent in it, he saw the first group of them approach. A few shots from his rifle, and they were taken care of. The sky began to darken, overcast with a gray hue from rolling clouds of radiation. Sickly green cracks of lightning boomed in the distance. Even the very wind sounded like it could kill him at any moment. This was not Boston. This wasn't even _America._ Harvey had stepped foot into an unknown alien world, replete with all the horrors this xenophobic wasteland had to offer. Sure, he could pass over a chunk of highway, or pass a church, something that reminded him that this place was once home. But every step, every harsh wind, every storm that rolled by told him this was never home. Never was, never would be, now or ever.

In what he could only call total madness, he found the so-called Children of Atom. He didn't listen to their proselytizing, their stories of Atom. He only sought one man. He sought Virgil, Harvey told them. They told him he could find Virgil by going further southeast, living in a cave. Harvey was so close. Just a little further. The cave was in sight. Virgil was here.

Harvey would finally have the answers he sought.


	6. Freedom's Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harvey orients himself to his next task.

“Hold it!” a rough voice said. “Take it nice and slow. No sudden moves.”

Harvey didn't much expect himself to be face-to-face with a stunted Super Mutant. This must be Virgil.

“I know you're from the Institute,” the Super Mutant said. “So where's Kellogg, huh? Trying to sneak up on me while you distract me? It's not going to work! I'm not stupid, I know they'd send him after me!”

“Take it easy,” Harvey said. “Kellogg's dead. I killed him.”

Virgil's eyes shot up. “Dead? Huh… Kellogg was ruthless… there's a reason they used him for all their dirty work for so long. So you killed him, huh? Then what do you want with _me?”_

“I know you were part of the Institute, and you escaped. They sent Kellogg to kill you.”

Virgil's eyes narrowed. “How the hell do you know any of that?!”

“Did you forget the part where I said I killed Kellogg? Where _you_ talked about the Institute?” Harvey asked. “I need to know how to get into the Institute. You got out. If I was going to kill you, I'd have done it already, so help me out here.”

“Are you serious?” Virgil asked, arching an eyebrow. _“You_ want to get into the Institute? Are you insane? Never mind how nearly impossible that is, even _if_ you were to succeed it'd almost certainly result in your immediate death. What reason could you _possibly_ have for taking that kind of risk?”

Underneath his helmet, Harvey's eye twitched involuntarily as he looked down, sighing. “My son's been kidnapped. The Institute took him.”

“Oh. Oh no,” Virgil muttered. “I had no idea. I'm sorry. Yeah…the Institute has taken a lot of people in the Commonwealth in the past.”

Harvey rolled his eyes. “So I've heard. Can you help me get in or not?”

“Yes,” Virgil said. “But… I'm going to need something in return.”

“You help me, I'll help you,” Harvey replied.

“Before I was forced to leave, I was working on a serum to reverse this mutation. It could return me to normal, you understand? You're going to need to get into my old office, find it, and bring it to me. I think that's pretty reasonable, in exchange for helping you.”

Harvey nodded. So, the Institute _didn't_ employ Super Mutants. Good to know. “Alright,” he said. “Deal.”

“Okay,” Virgil said, taking a seat and gesturing for Harvey to do the same. “Let's talk details. You know how the synths get in and out of the Institute?”

“Teleporter,” he replied. “Don't know the specifics. Some sort of relay.”

“I'm impressed,” Virgil replied. “That's a pretty closely guarded secret. It's commonly referred to as the Molecular Relay. I don't know all the science behind it, not my department. De-materializes you in one place, re-materializes you in another. Sounds crazy, but it's reality. The Relay is the _only_ way in and out of the Institute. Got it? The _only_ one.”

Harvey nodded. “Which means I'm going to have to use it.”

“Yup. Ever seen an Institute Courser?”

“Might have,” he replied. “Let me guess. Wear a lot of black, sunglasses, kind of have that dark and brooding look about them?”

“Something like that. They're synths with one purpose. To hunt down and kill whatever the Institute sets them on. Operation goes wrong, synth goes missing, they dispatch a Courser. They're very good at what they do, and you're going to have to kill one.”

“Good thing I'm pretty fucking good at what I do. Where can I find one?”

Virgil scoffed. “I suppose your enthusiasm counts for something. Every Courser has a chip that allows them to communicate with the Relay. That chip is inside their head. Now, I don't know where exactly you can find one. They haven't sent one after me yet, and waiting around doesn't seem like a good plan. You're going to have to hunt one down.”

“Shouldn't be that hard. Give me the details, and I can get on it.”

“Primary insertion point for Coursers is in the ruins of CIT, so you'll want to head there. The Relay causes heavy electromagnetic interference. If your Pip-Boy's radio is working, you can track it via the lower end of the spectrum on that. Follow the signal, and there's your Courser. If you want in…well, I have notes on the theory behind their teleporter. You can have them – no use to me now. Needs some kind of code.”

Harvey nodded, taking the notes and putting them in a bag he had strapped to his power armor. “Sounds like a plan. Looks like I got some dangerous prey.”

* * *

Harvey didn't go back to Diamond City. He didn't go get Piper and Nick. He barely even went back to Sanctuary to get his power armor off, trade out his weapons. He had marched right to the ruins of CIT, connected the dots behind the Institute's name, and then like an irradiated bloodhound, tracked down the Courser to Greentech Genetics. Harvey had figured it out, the meaning behind the Institute. They must have had ties to the Commonwealth Institute of Technology, either a claimed history or they were the remnants of it. Either was possible. What he didn't care about right now was finding out which theory was true.

He cared about climbing this tower, finding the Courser, and murdering him.

“The Courser's on the second floor,” a voice announced over the PA system. “Kill on sight. Send reinforcements to the second floor in case there are more.”

Sounded like somebody was trying to beat him to the Courser killing party. Too bad. He'd have to stop them before they took away all his fun. He headed upstairs, crossing a walkway straddled over an atrium. Three contacts in the opposite hallway, each one unprepared for him. He could hear footsteps and gunfire above. Sounded like the contact these guys were after was moving fast.

Up the stairs. Two more hostiles, both dispatched with a single shot. They weren't an issue for the 7.62 power behind his Chinese assault rifle. Sounded like chaos above him. Too many gunshots to count. Lot of yelling. The man on the loudspeaker was shouting out orders, but didn't realize that his men were getting chewed through. Harvey lost track of the floors, just seeing targets that needed to be taken out on his way up to the Courser. Each ruined hallway, wrecked meeting room, and burnt office was just a blur, a set piece that could have happened on any point. At this point, breaching and clearing was less a tactical maneuver and more a matter of brute forcing his way into a room, destroying anyone and everything that happened to be inside.

By the time he had reached the elevator, he realized that his rifle was out of ammo. No problem. A dead gunman had a shotgun. Harvey picked it up, checking the loaded ammo. One in the chamber, loaded tube. He topped it off. This would have to be enough, and if not, oh well. He could get more ammo off the dead ones. He pushed the button to the elevator, waiting for it to rise up. It had been a long time since combat had gotten him this angry. Maybe it was the pure rage of knowing he was close to finding Shaun, just with a few steps in the way.

The upper floor was quiet, and dark. Odd. He ascended a staircase, then another. Voices. Begging. Sounded like someone had somebody hostage Something about a password. A deathly calm, icy voice. Harvey stepped up the final set of stairs, seeing a man in all black standing over a gunman, a white pistol raised against his head. He turned to stare at Harvey with cold, dead eyes.

“You've been following me,” he said. “Are you here for the synth?”

“That's not why I'm here,” Harvey said matter-of-fact.

“If you're not here for the synth,” he said, “then you're here for me. What do you want?”

“I'm here to kill you and take what's inside your head.”

The man stared back, before slightly nodding. “That, you cannot have, I am afraid.”

Without a second word, Harvey opened fire, blasting the Courser away with a solid hit of buckshot. He crumpled to the ground, moaning in pain. Surprisingly, he got back up, but Harvey was faster. He had already gotten over the Courser, pointing the shotgun at his head and pulling the trigger. The Courser's head exploded, painting the room with blood and vitae. Kneeling down, Harvey began searching. Thank God for durable electronics. The chip he was looking for had survived intact, no worse for wear.

“I'm on my way, Shaun, hold tight.” he muttered.

Behind him, he heard one of the hostage stirring. “Hey, a little help?”

Harvey turned to look at the hostages. Looked like Gunners, if what he knew about them was true. “What do you want me to do?”

“Fuck if I know,” he said. “Let me go, maybe?”

“No.” Not his problem, not his circus. He had to get this chip analyzed.

* * *

Piper, as usual, was back in Diamond City, and his first stop on his way to brainstorm where he could go to get this thing checked out. She seemed almost relieved to see him again, smiling wide when he walked though her office.

“Hey Blue,” she said. “Been a while. You, uh…you find Virgil out there?”

Harvey nodded. He was glad he had ditched the power armor and Chinese rifle. Having his M14 back in his hands felt good. “And then some. Killed an Institute Courser.”

Piper's eyes shot up, and she blinked several times. “Sorry, you _what?_ Did I hear you right, Harvey?”

“Yup. Killed a Courser. About to go find out who can take a look at this thing, help me figure a way in.”

She stared at him dumbfounded, before cracking up laughing and shaking her head. “Wow, that's… wow, Harvey.” Almost as quickly as her smile came, she dropped it. “You're serious, aren't you?”

“Yeah. About to go get Nick. You wanna join us?”

Piper swallowed, looking side to side for a moment, but confidently nodded. “Yeah. Give me a second, will you?”

Harvey nodded in return, waiting outside for her to be done. A few minutes later, Piper appeared – still carrying the same rifle he had given her – and a concerned look on her face as she closed the door to Publick Occurrences.

“Ready to go?” Harvey asked.

“Yeah,” she said, almost caught off-guard by the question, jumping slightly.

He thought Piper was acting oddly, but he ignored it. Nick wasn't that far away, they could get back to being on the road pretty soon.

However, they were barely five minutes away from Piper's door when she suddenly blurted out, “You're not an idiot!”

Harvey paused, turning to face her. “Uh, thanks, I guess?”

She furrowed her brow, exhaling a harsh breath as she tried to figure out words. Ironic, considering her profession. “No, I don't mean it like…” she huffed, before pensively sighing. “I could just use some help. This isn't the sort of thing I'd normally bother anyone _else_ with, but you just seem _really good_ with people, and…”

Piper's dead pause caused him to cock an eyebrow at her. “And…?”

“I've got this… _issue._ With my sister, Nat, becoming _me.”_

“Okay, you're gonna have to narrow that down a bit,” Harvey said, frowning. _“Becoming you?_ What do you mean?”

“I'm just…_terrified_ she's going to start taking up like her big sis. Like, it wasn't that bad when you were out in the Glowing Sea, but…no offense intended, Blue, but 'personal safety' doesn't exactly seem like either of our strong suits.” She sighed, putting a hand on her face that was wrought with worry and concern. “I… I can't imagine her ending up like me, dodging bullets and running from all the people she's pissed off. It's part of the reason I'm on the road so much. Part of the reason I went with you in the first place.”

Harvey furrowed his brow, contemplating Piper's words as they were coming out of her mouth. It was tough, what she was saying. Had every right to be afraid, really. If he and Shaun were living in this kind of world? He'd be afraid of what it meant, too.

“I just keep thinking if…” Piper muttered, maybe more to herself than anything. “Maybe if I make myself scarce, if I'm not around her enough, she'll cool off. She'll just…go back to being sweet, innocent Nat, papergirl and all-around upstanding citizen.” An air of wistfulness had entered her voice, and she started shaking her head in confusion, sitting down on a nearby stool and looking up at him. “What do I do, Harvey?”

God, if there was ever a hard question to answer, this was it. He took a few moments to think, choosing his words carefully. There was almost no right answer here, but he knew Piper wouldn't want to hear that. Who the hell _would,_ after spilling their guts out to someone?

“You just… love her,” Harvey said, shrugging. “Family's precious. Last thing you wanna do is drive them away, because… well, then you might lose them forever.”

Piper's face fell, and her mouth hung slightly agape as she looked away. She didn't _want_ to hear this answer, but she seemed to be accepting it anyway. “You're right. I can't risk that. Thanks, Blue. Who'd expect wandering off with a stranger would end up this well? They really don't make them like you anymore, you know that? You're a hell of a friend.”

“Just a friend, huh?” Harvey smirked, grinning wide. It had been a long time since he had ever felt this way, both figuratively and literally. He wasn't sure if this would ever go anywhere, but…maybe it could.

Immediately, Piper's face turned crimson red, and her eyes grew wide. “Uh, well, yeah, I thought so. Unless, you know, something changes. Did it get hot in here?”

“Come on,” he said, jerking his head. “Let's go get Nick.”

Piper seemed all too glad to get a move on, following him to Nick's office. As usual, he and Ellie were inside. Nick sat at his desk, poring over a case file, while Ellie filed paperwork at the front desk, a smile on her face as they walked in.

“Harvey!” she said. “It's been a while! How have you been?”

Nick looked up, surprised. “Back from the Glowing Sea?”

“I'll fill you in more later,” Harvey explained. “Killed a Courser. I'm about to find someone who can help me analyze this thing. Any of you got ideas?”

Nick's eyebrows jumped up, no doubt trying to process this information. “Alright, uh… huh. There's only one outfit I can think of that would have the know-how to do this, and that's the Railroad.”

“Trading one hard-to-find group for another, huh?” Piper asked, shaking her head.

“Gotta find them. Any clues on how?”

Piper arched an eyebrow, smirking. “Follow the Freedom Trail. All anyone says.”

Harvey nodded, already starting to get an idea of where to go. Nick had already grabbed his pistol, standing up and telling Ellie to take good care of the place while he was gone. Together, the three left Diamond City, heading to Boston Common.

He remembered there used to be a tour that took you around Boston, a path of red and brick that took people to historic sights. Railroad must have used these. All these groups were just _steeping_ themselves in history, weren’t they? Harvey wondered how these people would delude themselves and twist the American ideology around.

“We’ve got a two and a half mile trip in front of us, more or less,” Harvey announced as they neared Boston Common. “With how much Boston’s landscape has changed, I’m not sure how direct our route will be.”

“Didn’t think I’d get my own tour of Boston from the man who lived it 200 years ago,” Nick said, lighting up a cigarette.

Like he expected, the red paint that delineated the Freedom Trail was faded, but still clear as day. Each time he passed by a landmark, someone had painted something on the marker, a number and one of the letters. It was a code of some type – 7 Alpha, 4 Lima, 6 Oscar, similar things. Their travels took them across ruined Boston landscapes, including a Faneuil Hall populated by Super Mutants, which culminated at the Old North Church.

Standing before it, it resembled less the holy institution he recognized, and more like a scene out of some sort of apocalyptic movie. A sigil of a lantern had been drawn on the ancient brick next to the rear door. This must be where the elusive Railroad was, or at least somewhere that they did work. Harvey cautiously opened the door to the Old North Church, fearing what he would see inside. If the rest of Boston was any indication, this place would be just as ruined.

Unfortunately, he had been right. Holes dotted the interior walls, and the inside of the chapel had collapsed. Ghouls had once been here, he could see the bodies, but someone had cleared them out. Might have been the Railroad.

“Even after all these years,” Nick muttered, looking over the organ that had collapsed onto the main floor. “It still feels sacred.

“Yeah,” Piper agreed. “Real shame to see a place like this neglected.”

Harvey wasn’t much religious himself, but looking at the ruined pews and demolished roof, it was another nightmare he didn’t want to live through. There had been a fire in here once, judging by the cracked, black remains of the pews and wood. Massive hole in the roof. Nobody alive was up here. What about the crypt? Maybe the Railroad had contacts down there.

Underneath the crypt, someone had spilled some kind of luminescent paint on the floor, marking a path in the darkness. One of the crypt doors had wires passing out from it, and a marker taken from the Freedom Trail embedded in the wall. Arrow pointed to a letter. The code made sense now – number corresponded to a letter in a word. Had to be simple to remember, but mysterious enough that without the full code, it didn’t make sense to anyone else.

Railroad. Only thing that made sense. Easy to remember, could be put on the markers. When the code was entered in the marker, the crypt wall opened, and into darkness, Harvey, Piper and Nick stepped.

“If I could get the chills,” Nick muttered, “this would be the place to give ‘em.”

Barely five steps into the crypt, floodlights blinded them. He heard the telltale signs of people crouching down, taking positions. Someone had a minigun, revving up just in case they tried something.

“Stop right there,” a woman said. “You went through a lot of effort to arrange this meeting. But before we go any further, answer my questions.”

“Alright,” Harvey said, raising an arm to shield his eyes from the light. “Ask away.”

“First off, who the hell are you?”

Squinting, Harvey tried to see if he could make out forms. Too bright. “I followed the Freedom Trail looking for the Railroad. I’m not your enemy.”

“If that’s true, you have nothing to fear. Who told you how to contact us?”

Piper cleared her throat, raising a hand. “Uh, that’d be me. I gave him the lead on you guys.”

“I see. Last question. Why are you here?”

“I tracked down and killed a Courser at Greentech Genetics. I need help breaking the encryption on his chip.”

“Excuse me, you have _what?”_ the woman demanded. “This is _not_ a joking matter.”

“Do I sound like I’m fucking joking to you?” Harvey asked, tilting his head. “Want to lower the guns, or what?”

A second voice came in, chuckling. “Hey, I didn’t know we were having a party. What gives with my invitation? Oh, hey, the Courser-killer’s here. _Nice.”_

“Deacon, you’re late,” the woman said. What Harvey wouldn’t give to fucking _see_ what was going on. “You’re saying this intruder actually killed a Courser, single-handedly? That’d give even Glory a run for her money.”

“Oh, yeah, this guy is the real deal,” Deacon said. “If you’re done interrogating him, might wanna show the guy a little respect. Just a thought.”

The lights dimmed, and Harvey heard the minigun spin down. In front of him, he saw four people, two with their guns drawn but lowering. A woman stood in the center, dressed in blue jeans, black boots, a gray shirt and a tan vest, some kind of scarf covering her neck, looked down on the three. Next to her was a man who for all purposes could be described accurately as nondescript. White shirt, black hair, sunglasses. It was as if he was trying to hide as conspicuously as possible.

“I owe you an apology,” the woman said. “Anyone who kills a Courser is good in my book. I’m Desdemona, and I’m the leader of the Railroad.”

Harvey nodded, lowering his arm now that the lights had dimmed. “Hopefully we can work something out.”

“What you’re asking for puts us in a tricky position,” she said.

Deacon’s eyebrows shot up, shaking his head as he headed to Desdemona’s side, practically pleading with her. “Dez, we need to let him in! He’s got an intact Courser chip, for God’s sake!”

_“That_ violates our security protocols,” she said harshly.

“To hell with protocols!” Deacon shot back. _“He. Killed. A. Courser._ There’s no way he’s working for the Institute!”

Desdemona held up a hand, furrowing her brow. It was clear she wasn’t thrilled with Deacon’s little outburst. She relaxed her expression, turning back to Harvey. “We’re letting you into our headquarters. You’re the first outsider to ever be given this privilege. We’ll discuss details about your chip inside.”

She turned and began walking away with the other two following close behind, while Deacon hung back, smirking knowingly. Behind him, he heard Piper let out a heavy breath. The three began to follow Desdemona further into the headquarters, and it surprised Harvey just how complicated this setup had really become. This wasn’t just a hole in the wall, this was a complicated, hidden headquarters that seemed at odds with what he expected.

“Decoding a Courser chip is a delicate operation,” she said as she led them down a set of stairs. “A million things can go wrong, the _least _of which is losing the data. Fortunately, we have the right man for the job.”

Desdemona led them to a man dressed in blue overalls, wearing what looked like a flight hat with some kind of improvised magnifying lens on top. “Hey Dez,” he said. “Need something?”

“Tom, our visitor here has a Courser chip.”

“Whoa!” Tom said, practically jumping out of his chair as his eyes grew wide. “For real?! It’s been _ages!”_

“Right,” Desdemona said, turning back to Harvey. “Some ground rules. Tom can get you the code, but once he’s done, _we_ get the Courser chip.”

“Sure,” Harvey said, shrugging. “I don’t need the damn thing anyway.”

“Alright. Tom, make it happen.”

Tom took control of the chip, whispering to it almost as if he had bean handed a newborn child more than a piece of hardware. Harvey didn’t much listen to him going on about the encryption and breaking their methods, all he cared about were _results._ Desdemona had warned them it may take a while. Well, time to broach the hard conversation.

“Alright, so because I’m trusting you with this,” Harvey said, pulling a seat up next to Desdemona. “I’m aiming to get into the Institute.”

She laughed dryly, shaking her head. “Usually we try to get people _out,_ but I’m listening.”

“I need to build a signal interceptor to get in. The Institute uses teleportation tech to insert Coursers in and out, and it’s all relayed through the classical music station. The data from this chip will help us get in.”

“Even if one of my own agents told me that, I’d be skeptical,” Desdemona said, narrowing her eyes. “And from a stranger… listen, you’re obviously talented. I believe you’d be a great asset to our organization. So _prove it._ There’s an op Deacon needs a hand on. Run it with him, and by the time you’re back, we should have your data.”

Harvey sighed, looking around the area. These people looked deathly serious. Might be best to get a good in with them this way. “Alright then. It’ll get done. As long as you don’t take the data and clear out of here.”

“We’re here for good,” she said. “We keep our word.”

God, just the _way_ she said all that made it sound like she was implying he wouldn’t. Like he wasn’t trustworthy. He knew that she had no way of knowing, but goddammit, did everyone he meet have to act this fucking way? He had done his time. Whatever, time to meet with Deacon.

He practically met him first, already on his way to the interior when Harvey got up and started heading out. “Hey, hope you didn’t mind the reception,” he said. “When you tango with the Institute, you gotta be careful when someone new steps on the dance floor.”

“Happens,” Harvey said. “Gotta be cautious, I get it.”

“Eh, we all know we’re on the same team,” Nick said.

Deacon nodded, pointing to Nick. “Exactly. Kind of killed our chance at a good first impression, though. But, it’s all good now. I vouched for you, nobody got shot. Still, I would consider it a close personal favor if you _didn’t_ sell us out to the Institute. Thanks.”

“I don’t plan on selling anyone out,” Harvey said.

“I’ll take it,” Deacon said. “Well, glad to have you on our side. Dez fill you in on this op we need to do?”

“Broad details,” he replied. “What’s the plan?”

“For now, I just need to know if you’re in.”

Harvey sighed, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, I just went over this with your boss. I don’t have much time to waste here.”

“Alright, cool. Meet me at the old highway outside Lexington. I’ll fill you in further there.”

Deacon took off, not even waiting for Harvey to wait to ask questions. He could already tell this could become very irritating, very fast.


	7. Tradecraft

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harvey assists Deacon with "a job."

Night had fallen by the time they reached the highway, as well as a storm. Thankfully, not a radstorm this time, just a regular, rain-filled storm that brought lightning and thunder instead of radiation. His hair had become wet, a side-effect from the mass amounts of rain t that was coming down.

“Deacon?” Harvey said, looking at a man wearing some kind of trench coat, a fedora, and sunglasses. “Is that you?”

“Like it?” he asked, spinning around as if he were a fashion model. “It’s wastelander camo.” Behind the sunglasses, he narrowed his eyes, waving a pretend knife at Piper. “This is _my_ pile of garbage, asshole. Back off!”

The three of them stared back, trying to figure out how to respond to his sudden act.

“Good, right?” Deacon said, smiling wide and laughing. “You’re lucky I didn’t do one of my face swaps, too.”

“You can change your face?” Harvey asked incredulously, arching an eyebrow.

Deacon nodded. “I put myself under the knife every year or two. New face, new body, you know, the whole makeover. Keeps our enemies guessing.”

“Huh,” Nick muttered. “Almost didn’t recognize our local spy…”

“That’s the point,” Deacon said, missing the obvious sarcasm. “Alright, so, the job. The Railroad’s only recently been using the Old North Church. Our old base was underneath a Slocum’s Joe. We had a pretty sweet setup until the Institute found us.”

“Your base was under a doughnut shop?” Piper asked.

“It’s a lot better than it sounds,” he sheepishly admitted. “Well, it _was_ until it was blown to hell.”

Harvey nodded. “Sounds like it was bad.”

“Talk about disaster with a capital D,” Deacon said sadly. “The survivors didn’t have time to grab anything. So we’re getting something important we had to leave behind. We got a tourist nearby, he or she has information on the base, so lets pump them for information before we go in guns blazing.”

Deacon headed off, moving up to the highway itself. He explained along the way that they were looking for signals, signs they used to send messages to each other. Dead drops and countersigns were all part of the game as well, including what he maybe only half-jokingly referred to as a secret handshake. One such sign was on the concrete divider, indicating a tourist was just ahead. They neared a rusted-out trailer, bearing a sigil that had a plus in the center. According to Deacon, this said there was an ally nearby.

“You take point on the conversation,” he said. “No matter what he says, just say ‘Mine is in the shop’, trust me.”

“Alright then,” Harvey said, irritated he had to initiate this dialogue. Wasn’t Deacon supposed to be the one running this? Either way, they approached a man with a handlebar mustache, who looked incredibly relieved to see them.

“Oh thank god,” he said, his voice rough and gravelly. “Do you have a Geiger counter? Tell me you have a goddamn Geiger counter.”

“Mine is in the shop,” he said, raising an eyebrow.

The man furrowed his brow, frowning. “Who the hell is he?!” he demanded, looking at Deacon. “HQ said they were sending one agent, not fucking four. What kind of a circus is this?!”

“Sorry, I’m new,” Deacon said, and immediately Harvey shot him a dirty look. “He’s just showing me the ropes.”

“Fuckin’… well, fine, Wall is my witness, I thought I was dead. It’s about goddamn time you headquarters bastards got here.”

Harvey frowned, turning back to look at this man. “I’m not sure I like your tone. How’s about you get to the report and let us get to work?”

“I already got problems, asshole! I signed on for some light goddamn recon, but that Slocum’s Joe of yours is crawling with goddamn chrome-dome synth sons of bitches!”

“Hey, maybe watch it there,” Nick reminded him, waving his metal hand.

“Goddammit,” the man said, shaking his head, “not like _you,_ them fucking early ones! The front’s fortified to hell and back, and they’ve laid down a minefield. As soon as it’s safe, I’m getting the hell out of here, so if you got something, ask it quick.”

Harvey sighed, shaking his head. “No, I think we’re good. Hang tight, yeah?”

He looked out over the highway at the Slocum’s Joe, but couldn’t place it in the darkness. Looked like they’d have to close in on it. Disappointing. He wasn’t much a fan of the close-in type of recon. On his left, Deacon walked up, keeping his voice low. “Well, isn’t Ricky just a ray of sunshine. Think he’s telling the truth?”

“Speaking of, why’d you hang me out to dry and lie to him?”

“My job in the Railroad is intel. That job’s easier if nobody knows who I am.” Deacon shrugged. “So I lied. I do that. You handled the talky talk, and I watched from the sidelines, go team us.”

Harvey nodded. Made sense – for now. “Well, he doesn’t strike me as the dishonest type. He’s nervous, but that’s more from being unprepared for his job than lying to us.”

“That was my read too,” Deacon said, nodding in agreement. “First rule in this business is _never_ go against your gut. So, if we take him at his word…”

“Front door’s too heavily fortified for a frontal assault. it’d be suicide, and we don’t have the numbers for that kind of attack anyway.”

Deacon nodded again. “Yeah. So we have to go in through the escape tunnel.”

“Sounds like a plan. Where’s it at?”

He gestured for them to follow him, heading off back down the highway. To the right, they headed through a dead woods, passing over a small hill. Deacon led them past an overturned train, taking them to an oversized culvert. The massive steel pipe had a door inside, which was masked by moss that was hung over the top, concealing it from the casual observer.

“Here we are,” Deacon said, opening the door. “Time to take back what’s ours. Watch out for Gen 1s and 2s.”

The inside was marked by brick walls, dotted with red lights and a simple dirt floor. Regular white lights provided an occasional relief from the harsh red, but not often.

“So, it’s time you learn why we’re really here,” Deacon explained. “We’re retrieving a prototype made by our good Doctor Carrington.”

“Who’s Doctor Carrington?” Harvey asked.

“All goes well, you’ll meet him soon enough. I like our odds so far. First step is to override the security protocol.”

Deacon moved ahead, stepping towards a terminal that connected to a maglocked door. He started typing away at it, testing various passwords until he found one that worked. The door opened, allowing them to head through. Harvey could hear a turret operating not too far ahead. Another railsign – Deacon explained this one meant danger. Bodies all over the floor, must have been former Railroad agents.

“Jeez, Super Mutants decorate this place?” Piper asked quietly.

The walkway they were on ended, sloping down and following old sewer pipes. Harvey spotted a single synth walking around, likely patrolling. “One contact,” he reported.

“Guess we gotta start the party sometime,” Deacon muttered. “Anytime you guys are ready.”

Apparently, the synth detected them first as they crouched down, nearing the bottom. Nick opened fire first, killing the synth with little issue.

“Move fast,” Harvey ordered, doing his best to maintain his bearing as he slid down to the floor. The bottom was flooded, leading to a small cave that led to the next room. Turret must have been in here, but was it hostile to them? Probably. He heard synths moving. Harvey stepped through first, taking cover behind a pillar as the turret came to life. Deacon took out the turret, followed up with shots from Nick and Piper’s weapons.

More tunnels. More synths to kill. Each one became a blur as he moved through. Ricky was right, this place was positively crawling with these synths. Harvey lost track of where in the tunnel system he was as they descended further into the complex tunnels. Eventually, their travels brought them out to a command center, stocked with desks and computer terminals.

“Prepare to be shocked,” Deacon said. “Not every Slocum’s Joe has a massive tunnel system underneath it.”

“Color me shocked,” Harvey said.

“We’re entering a secret Defense Intelligence Agency research lab, a place that never officially existed. It’s called the Switchboard.”

Harvey had heard rumors of this place. Hanging from a cabin-like area, he saw the American flag. Dirty, but just like he remembered it. It was the first time he had seen the flag in a long time, ever since waking up. Nothing else had come close to replacing it. He felt like he was back at home.

Time to keep moving. Abandoned, empty hallways, another group of synths. One final locked door between them and the prototype. Deacon banged out a password into a computer, saying perhaps only half-jokingly, “Open says me”. The computer itself recognized him as Doctor Carrington, spewing out a Latin phrase Harvey didn’t know. A massive door opened, and inside was a body. Deacon knelt before it, solemnly sighing.

“So Tommy Whispers didn’t make it out,” he said sadly. “He died protecting our secrets.”

“His sacrifice won’t be forgotten,” Harvey said.

Deacon nodded, taking the man’s gun and handing it to Harvey. “Here. He would have wanted you to have his handcannon.”

Immediately, Harvey furrowed his brow. “Why? Why give this to me?”

“All our agents carry a special weapon given to us by Tinker Tom. Call this gun a vote of confidence.” Deacon went ahead and handed him a classic Walther PPK, with attached silencer. Seemed like a standard pistol, all things aside. Harvey nodded, holstering it. Carrington’s prototype looked like some kind of makeshift Stealth Boy. Harvey wondered how they got the tech to make this.

“Alright, cool,” Deacon said. “Elevator at the end of the hall. It’ll be a lot easier to fight the synths on this side of the minefield.”

“Agreed,” Harvey said.

The four charged through the hallway, then through the elevator up to the main floor of the Slocum’s Joe. Three synths sat inside, each taken out with little difficulty. When all was said and done, Deacon sighed, nodding at their handiwork.

“We got what we came here for,” he said. “Let’s split up and meet back at the catacombs.”

Deacon headed out, not waiting for a reply. Nick, Piper and Harvey sat in the Slocum’s Joe, dumbfounded and exhausted from the combat. They each dealt with the post-battle nerves in their own way – Nick smoked, Piper started jotting down notes, while Harvey rested his feet on whatever was nearby.

“So, do we wanna talk about how weird that guy is?” Piper asked.

“Not sure,” Harvey said. “Lot to unpack with him.”

The rain continued to pour down, with occasional cracks of lightning illuminating the area. All seemed quiet, aside from the shadows of wild, mutated beasts cast by the lightning. Dawn had begun to break across the sky. How long had they spent underneath the tunnels fighting? It felt like only a few minutes, but it must have been far longer.

Harvey sighed, first to get off the old chairs. “Alright, let’s head back to the Railroad’s HQ. Gotta get inside.”

Piper and Nick soon joined him as he started heading out, stepping into the rain with him. The road out from Lexington was lonely, dotted with abandoned cars and the bodies of dead caravan guards. Roundabout a mile from Lexington, they happened across a group of sandbags and a rusted out APC.

“What’s this?” Piper asked, cautiously looking around.

“Military checkpoint,” Harvey said. “Might have been set up before the bombs fell.”

Not much could be found here – a lot of ammo and equipment had been scavenged well before they got here.

“Hey, uh, Harvey, I wanted to ask you something,” Nick said as they moved on past the checkpoint.

“Ask away,” he replied.

“It’s just… everything that’s been going on with you, your family. I wanted to make sure you were doing alright.”

He took a minute to think, checking the area for any potential hostiles. All looked clear. One hell of a question to answer. “Yeah, I’m alright,” he said.

“Huh,” Nick said, surprised. “You’re a tougher nut than I thought. Tougher than I was. Took me a _long_ damn time to get a feel for this place. Thank goodness I found Diamond City.”

Piper chuckled, smiling. “Amen to that. Diamond City’s been good.”

“Flaws and all,” Nick said. “Course, back when I took up there, people were just as scared of the Institute. Maybe more. Massacre of the CPG was still fresh in everyone’s minds. Hell, people were still losing sleep over the Broken Mask. Lot of people assumed I was just a saboteur, moving in to melt down the reactor or poison the drinking water.”

“Yeah, I remember hearing about that,” Piper said. “I think you moved in a while before I did, right?”

Nick nodded. “I did, yeah. At the time, they couldn’t really turn me away.”

“Hold up,” Harvey said. “Massacre of the CPG? What’s that?”

“Right, yeah. The Commonwealth Provisional Government,” Nick explained. “Years back a group of settlements tried to get together and form a coalition. Every settlement with even a hint of clout sent representatives to try and hash out an agreement. Only, the Institute sent a representative of their own, a synth. The man killed every rep at the talks. The Commonwealth Provisional Government was over before it even got off the ground. I got in town not long after. I was damn lucky they didn’t just tell me to scram right then and there.”

“I think we’re all lucky, Nick,” Piper said.

“So, why’d they let you in?” Harvey asked.

“Because I rescued the mayor’s daughter,” he said, smirking. “Gal of about fifteen, pride and joy of the mayor back then, man of the name of Henry Roberts. The young miss Roberts decided she’d run off with some caravan hand she’d… _known_ for an evening. Turns out the guy was part of a group of kidnappers. I didn’t even know who I was rescuing, just stumbled on a crying girl and four toughs. Took her home and the Mayor dubbed me a hero, gave me my own house. Lot of folks protested, but he wouldn’t have it. Taking up was tricky, but I never hid what I was, and people seemed to warm up to that.”

“You took down four guys by yourself?” Harvey asked. Didn’t seem like him, honestly. Nick was a good shot, but not _that_ good, and he didn’t have any holes that indicated a four on one gunfight.

“Didn’t have to,” Nick said, wryly smiling. “Back then, synths were even more of an unknown quantity than they are today. I told them I was rigged to explode and started going ‘beep, beep, beep.’ Hardest part of that rescue was keeping from laughing as they ran over each other to get away.”

“Was it hard settling in, Nick?” Piper asked. “I’ve only ever seen you as like… the guy people went to.”

“Yeah, was at first. But, I guess folks never forgot I saved the Mayor’s daughter, so they came to me when people turned up missing. Wife runs off with a new paramour and takes the rent money? Talk to the synth. An upset father decides moving him and the kids to Goodneighbor in the dead of night might not be the worst damn idea since the bomb? Go get Nick. After a while, they stopped asking me to do handyman stuff because I was handling so many cases. I was so happy to do it, it was months before I started _charging_ anyone. I never stopped being Nick the synth, but it was Nick the _detective_ folks came to see. That’s when things started feeling normal. It took me a long time to realize home is where you make it. I figure with some time and effort, this can be home for you too. Long story, but… I hope it helps.”

By now, they had crossed past Bunker Hill, fairly close to the bridge where they were supposed to cross. Nick’s story helped to hear, even if Harvey wasn’t sure if he could call this home. He was seeing injustice, terror and insanity almost daily. Even just the trek from here to Lexington proved that. It felt like every settlement he came across, people feared for their lives, whether it was raiders, Gunners, or just the Institute. This wasn’t America. This wasn’t the world he had left behind.

Harvey resolved that, when he had his son back, he would set about fixing this.

“Hey, Blue,” Piper said, “you there? Shouldn’t leave your friends hanging like that.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Harvey said. “Thanks, Nick. It helps. We’ll… we’ll just see. I don’t know yet.”

* * *

They approached the Railroad’s HQ to see Deacon with a shaved head, spinning some tall tale about how Harvey had patched him up and put him on his shoulder, single-handedly blasting through the complex. Harvey could practically _hear_ Nick rolling his eyes, and Piper muttered “Oh brother,” as they got closer. Desdemona seemed less than convinced.

“Amazing, right?” Deacon finished, a wide grin on his face.

“That’s one word for it,” Desdemona said flatly, turning to Harvey as she smoked a cigarette. “Deacon’s telling me you single-handedly secured Carrington’s prototype, disabled a minefield, and wiped out a hundred Gen 1s. Is any of that _true?”_

Harvey rolled his eyes, unamused. “Hundred, no. Deacon was in active combat with _us,_ and I’d estimate the minefield was less complex than reported. I’d put synth numbers closer to fifty.”

Immediately, Desdemona’s eyes narrowed at Deacon, and she put out her cigarette. “Embellishing the truth again, are we?”

“She would’ve gone along with it, you know,” Deacon said to Harvey, ignoring Desdemona.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she shot back. “Well, looks like your little ad-hoc team did pretty well. I was expecting these sorts of results out of Glory, but…you three aren’t normal, I wager. Deacon’s never spoken so highly of – or lied about – someone this much before.”

Deacon smiled wide. “You’d be insane not to sign him up, Dez.”

“Welcome aboard then, agent,” Desdemona said.

“Glad to be on hand,” he replied. “Now, about getting into the Institute?”

“Right,” she said, nodding. “Your schematics. You need the frequency from the courser chip, I take it? What’s this machine _do?”_

Harvey wet his lips, trying to recall the words Virgil had used. “It’s some kind of molecular relay. Teleports coursers in and out. This thing can hijack their signal and send me instead.”

Desdemona let out a hollow, empty laugh. “Fucking hell. We’ve spent dozens of years and too damn many good agents only to discover not a goddamned thing, and now we have the answers thanks to you. Teleportation. I… god damn. We’ve got work to do. I’ll get Tinker Tom to help you in any way to get this thing built.”

“That’s all I ask for,” Harvey said, nodding.

* * *

The first step was decoding the plans. According to Tinker Tom, the schematics Virgil had made contained all the high-level technological know-how, but the engineering details were fleeting. It took time to figure out how it worked, and in the meanwhile, Harvey had been tasked with securing and fortifying a secondary location. Building the interceptor relay wasn’t possible underneath the Old North Church, not that anyone in the Railroad would _want_ to put it there. The “synth redistribution center” as P.A.M. put it, served a dual purpose of both serving the Railroad further and also being the site to build the relay.

It took the better half of a month, between fortifying the area and gathering the materials needed for the construction project. The interrupter was massive, taking up most of the land that they had earmarked as their new safehouse, and decidedly unsubtle. Harvey wondered if it was truly necessary to build it here, but continued to assist in gathering materials anyway.

Eventually, the day came where all was operational. It had all been linked together, built with the sort of haphazard wasteland tech necessary, prepared for a potentially deadly trail run.

Piper and Nick stood by, watching as Tinker Tom and Desdemona began the operations. “Alright people,” Desdemona announced. “We’re almost ready.”

Nick offered a hearty handshake, while Piper went straight for a hug, holding tightly as Harvey slowly returned it. “Come back safe, Blue,” she said. “I hope you find your son. I really do.”

“Thanks, Piper,” he said quietly, so only she could hear. “I’ll come back in one piece, I promise.”

“You better,” she replied, smiling. “Can’t let the inside man go and die.”

“We got activity, Dez,” Tinker Tom reported. “Not sure how long before it peaks!”

Desdemona nodded, leading Harvey away from Nick and Piper. “The Institute is a huge unknown. Before you go in, you need to know about Patriot. This is a closely guarded secret, do you understand me?”

“Crystal clear,” he said.

“There’s a man – or a woman, we’re not sure – inside the Institute who helps synths escape to freedom. Dozens of synths owe him their lives. We don’t know his or her name, never had a way to contact them, so we gave them the codename Patriot. If your plan works and you get inside the Institute, you _need_ to make contact with them.”

Harvey nodded, sighing deeply. “I’ll do my best. Could take a while though.”

“Tom’s encrypted a message for Patriot’s eyes only. Once they see it, they’ll contact you. We need you to stay in the Institute’s good graces, infiltrate them. It’s the only way we can guarantee this works. Can we count on you to do that?”

“I’m not in the habit of lying,” Harvey answered.

“Just hold out and do your best,” she said. “We can’t ask for anything more. Alright, let’s get this show on the road. Stand on the platform, and I’ll give you the holotape for Patriot. Just plug it into any Institute terminal and wait for a reply.”

Harvey nodded, doing as asked. The holotape looked fairly standard, aside from the orange plastic looking duller than he remembered. He couldn’t help but wonder where they had gotten this from.

“This frequency is only going to work once,” Tinker Tom announced. “You-Know-Who doesn’t make the same mistake twice.”

“Good luck in there,” Desdemona said.

Harvey rolled his shoulders, nodding to acknowledge her. A flash of blue light took over his vision. He was on his way.


	8. Underground Undercover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harvey enters the Institute, but not all is as it seems.

He panted heavily, collapsing on the cool, hard floor. Looked like concrete. Circular walls. Some kind of tech, probably mechanics for the molecular relay.

_Holy shit,_ he thought as he caught his breath. _It actually fucking worked._

He stepped out of the room, seeing some kind of console in front of him. White walls, gray floor. Walls looked like concrete, floors probably linoleum. He rounded the corner – console had a terminal in it. Harvey inserted the holotape in, copying the message to the network. Immediately, it spat out a reply.

_Acknowledged. Meet at the Advanced Systems maintenance room._

Fuck, didn’t Patriot realize he had no idea where the _fuck_ anything was here? Goddammit, he’d have to do this later. No time. He had to find Shaun. He turned around, heading out to a staircase.

“Hello,” a voice said over an intercom. Immediately, Harvey pulled out his pistol – they weren’t sure if his rifle could make it, so for now, his holstered pistol was his only weapon. He took cover at the doorway, unsure if someone would be coming for him.

“I wondered if you might make it here,” the voice continued. “You’re quite resourceful. I am known as Father; the Institute is under my guidance. _I_ know why you’re here. I’d like to discuss things with you, face-to-face. Please, step into the elevator.”

Harvey waited for two, three, four counts. Nothing. No footsteps, no noises. He headed to the bottom of the stairs, seeing an elevator ready for him. Check left – door, couldn’t be opened. OK, circle back up to the terminal. Any exits? No. None.

The elevator was the only option.

Shaking his head, Harvey stepped into the elevator, feeling like he was walking right into a trap.

“I can only imagine what you’ve heard, what you think of us,” Father said as the elevator began to slowly go down. “I’d like to show you that you may have…the wrong impression. Welcome to the Institute.”

Glass windows approached from the bottom, revealing a complex that Harvey only thought possible in science fiction novels. He saw people milling about, what he assumed to be scientists talking to each other, and green plant life. _Green._ How long had it been since he had seen something green that wasn’t a fucking Super Mutant?

“This is the reality of the Institute,” Father continued. “This place, these people, the work we do. For over a hundred years, we’ve dedicated ourselves to humanity’s survival. Decades of research, countless experiments and trials…a shared vision of how science can help shape the future.”

Harvey looked down, watching the bottom of this atrium approach. Clean water, and not clean as in “not full of radiation,” actually _clean._ He could see his own reflection in it as it passed by him.

“It has never been easy, and our actions are often misinterpreted by those above ground. Perhaps someday we can show them what we’ve accomplished. But for now, we must remain underground.”

The elevator slowed to a stop, bringing Harvey to a subfloor and a hallway as his only route, the door opening to allow him to move ahead.

“There’s too much at stake here to risk it all. As you’ve seen, things above ground are…unstable. I’d like to talk to you about what we can do… for everyone.”

Harvey stepped off the elevator, slowly moving down the hall. He checked every corner, every angle, still cautious of a hidden threat. He was not convinced that this wasn’t an elaborate setup for an ambush, a way to punish him for _daring_ to intrude upon the Institute.

“But, that can wait,” Father said. “You are here for a specific, personal reason. You are here for your son.”

Another elevator at the end of the hall. Harvey stepped into it, pushing the button, pistol at the ready. There was no such thing as too much caution, especially when dealing with an unknown as dangerous as the Institute.

The elevator door opened, and he stepped out, an arrested sob escaping his lips. It was him. It was really him. Older, yes, but… it was Shaun. He had been put in a room, almost like an observation room for a test subject. Harvey’s smile was wider than it had ever been as he approached, kneeling down to see his son again. Shaun wasn’t aware he was there yet, still happily playing with his toys.

“Shaun?” he said.

“Huh?” Shaun said, turning around. “Yes, I’m Shaun.”

“Oh my god,” Harvey said, putting a hand over his mouth. He could barely believe his eyes. “It really is you. I’ve been looking for you for so long, buddy!”

“Who are you?”

Of course. It must have been close to ten years, judging by how old Shaun looked. “Shaun, it’s me, I’m your dad, it’s okay buddy.”

“Father?” Shaun called out, looking around. “What’s going on?”

“Yes, it’s me!” Harvey said. “I’m your dad, Shaun! Just…open the door and we can go!”

“I don’t know you!” he shouted back through the glass. “Go away! Father, help me, there’s someone here!”

_“Please,_ Shaun!” Harvey said desperately. “I’m your father! Just listen to me!”

“Help me, Father! He’s trying to take me!”

On his right, a man entered the room in a labcoat and brown slacks, with gray hair. “Shaun, S9-23 Recall Code Cirrus,” he said, and immediately Shaun slumped over. “Fascinating, but disappointing. The child’s responses were not at all what I anticipated.”

“What the _fuck_ did you do to him, you gangrenous fuck?!” Harvey spat, marching up to the unknown man with his pistol drawn.

“He’s a prototype, you understand. We’re only just now beginning to explore the effects of extreme emotional stimuli.” the man said, irrationally calm given he had a fucking gun in his face. “Please try to keep an open mind. I recognize that you are…_emotional,_ and that your journey here has been fraught with challenges.”

Harvey gritted his teeth, poking his pistol’s barrel in the man’s face. “Fucking answer me, you goddamn scumbucket. What. Did. You. Do?”

“Let’s start anew, shall we? I am Father. Welcome to the Institute.”

“I don’t give a fuck if you’re the goddamn Queen of England, give me Shaun, the _real_ Shaun, right _fucking_ now or I’ll scatter your brains on this wall!”

“I know, I know… you’ve gone to such lengths to find him.”

He could feel his anger growing, the grip on his pistol tightening. “Answers, asshole. _Now.”_

“Under the circumstances, I will forgive your…vulgarity. But I need you to realize that this…_situation_ is far more complicated than you could ever imagine. You have traveled very far and suffered a great deal, to find your son. Well, your tenacity and dedication have been rewarded.” He relaxed his shoulders, looking Harvey in the eyes. “It’s good to finally meet you, after all this time. It’s me. I am Shaun.”

Harvey’s grip shook, and he closed his eyes in a vain attempt to stop tears from flowing. This wasn’t right, _couldn’t_ be right. Who the fuck was this guy, why was he trying to be Shaun? It… it didn’t make sense. “How the _fuck_ is that possible?” he demanded.

“I know it’s a lot to take in,” “Shaun” said. “In the Vault, you had no concept of the passage of time. You were released from your pod, and went searching for the son you’d lost. But then you learned your son was not an infant, but a ten-year old boy. You believed ten years had passed. Is it really so hard to accept that it was not ten years, but sixty? That is the reality. And…here I am. Raised by the Institute, and now its leader.”

“They _kidnapped_ you!” Harvey shot back. “It wasn’t right! They had no right to do it!”

“Right, wrong… irrelevant. It was _necessary._ The Institute believed humanity’s future depended on it. It was my DNA that provided the basis of every human-like synth you see today. I am their Father. Through science, we are a family. The synths, me… and you.”

“And you’ve just… been down here this whole time?”

“I have, yes. I know you must have questions. Please, anything I can do to help you understand. We are on the verge of some important breakthroughs, and your presence would be appreciated. You are free to speak to whoever you wish, if that is your goal in understanding.”

“I’m… fine.” Harvey said, unable to find words. Okay. Lot to take in. Harvey could use the excuse Father – _Shaun_ had given him to wander around. He could find Patriot. Even if he had not found his son, he could get the Railroad answers.

* * *

Harvey spent the better part of a week in the Institute. He had gone around, partially by Shaun’s request to meet the various heads of the Institute science divisions and spent time here. He heard word of food supplements, fearing that there would be some sort of bizarre science-fiction experiment as a replacement for real food. Instead, he found that the Institute was able to replicate food just as well, if not better, than anything he had ever eaten before the bombs fell. He saw the bioscience program’s work with replicating animals, already highly successful with gorillas. He saw the progress the robotics division was making, while advanced systems was not only working on new forms of energy, but creating technology he once thought impossible.

It overwhelmed him, and terrified him all the same. He could not reconcile what he saw inside with what he knew of the world. The Institute’s scientists derisively referred to those on the surface as “outsiders” and “surface-dwellers”, but the strides they were making were impossible to ignore. Harvey admitted he once thought of the synths as abominations, but the more he learned the more he could tell he had once been wrong.

And thus, he lagged behind on delivering the information to Patriot, a low-level Institute scientist that just haphazardly sent synths out to the world and expected nothing else. Could he trust this man? He didn’t appear to actually know how instrumental he was to the Railroad’s success, but why would he have appeared at the meeting place were he not involved? Harvey briefly contemplated the idea that he was a decoy, but when nobody from the so-called Synth Retention Bureau came for him, Harvey suspected that the Institute as a whole knew nothing.

Harvey had promised to Patriot to get him access to a set of old user credentials in order to log on to version 1 of the Institute’s main operating system. It necessitated going back to the surface, and Harvey was beginning to feel his presence was starting to be unwelcome in the Institute anyway. He returned to the world above, heading straight for the Railroad first. As expected, they sought a full debrief, which Harvey gave. Their requisitioned and reprogrammed US Army Assaultron, named P.A.M for unknown reasons, claimed she would need to go over the data before making an assessment on their next task.

Which meant that Harvey had to go see Nick and Piper next.

* * *

His two friends had elected to wait for him in Diamond City. By chance, Nick was visiting Piper’s office when he walked in, leading to a surprised look on both of their faces. Nick let out a bemused, low laugh, while Piper immediately stopped typing away on her terminal to get up and embrace Harvey in a long, tight hug.

“I thought for sure you bought it in there,” Nick muttered.

He felt Piper’s shoulders suddenly jolt up and down, followed up quickly by a peculiar wetness on his shoulder. Piper was _crying._ “I’m really, really happy you’re back, Blue,” she said quietly.

“I’m not seeing young Shaun with you,” Nick noted. “Uh… dare I ask?”

Harvey sighed, returning Piper’s hug as best he could. She pulled away, drying her tears as she looked at him.

“Yeah,” Harvey said. “About that… turns out my son’s the leader of the Institute.”

“Oh jeez,” Piper muttered. “How… how are you doing?”

He took a deep breath, letting it out just as slowly. “I… I don’t know. I thought ten years had passed, but… it was sixty. I missed my son’s whole _life.”_

Nick nodded, lighting up a cigarette. “That’s gotta be tough. I… I really do wish you the best, Harvey. What do you plan to do now?”

“I don’t know,” Harvey answered plainly. Nick looked at him with sympathetic eyes, solemnly nodding as he made his exit, letting Harvey know that he was always around if he needed him.

“Hey, Blue, got a minute for me?” Piper asked, gesturing to a nearby couch.

“Sure,” he replied, taking a seat next to her. “What's up?”

“Just, what you said about Nat. I'd been going over it in my head again and again, and…what you said was right. Family's too precious. What kind of life is she going to have if I never go near her again? It's just… sometimes it feels like the only things I've got in life are Nat and the paper. Having someone I can count on, someone like you, it's meant a lot to me. Not a lot of people want to hang around with a nosy reporter.”

He smiled, chuckling softly. “Yeah, but you're my kind of nosy.”

Piper grinned, pushing a lock of hair out of her face. “Heh. You're the exception. I haven't exactly made a lot of friends in career. I just wanted to right things I thought were wrong.”

She sighed, shaking her head. “And when Nat and I got to Diamond City, there was a _lot_ of wrong. Crooked guards, lousy infrastructure, there was a hole in the exterior wall that was patched over with a bookcase.” She looked at Harvey incredulously. “_One bookcase._ That's it! I started the paper more as an act of desperation than anything else. It turned out, I wasn't the only one who wanted things to change. After the first couple editions, people may not have _agreed_ with what I was saying, but everyone was listening.”

“OK, hold on, I gotta ask,” he interrupted, holding up a hand in disbelief. “One bookcase? Not even some _tape_ or something?”

“No! But _now,_ you can't even tell where the hole was. Brick, real mortar, the works, all because of the paper. When that first edition hit the stands, I felt like I'd finally _done_ something worth doing, but afterwards, things…things changed.” Piper’s face, once happy from the absurd memory of the bookcase, fell. “People didn't wanna talk the way they used to. Seemed that overnight, I'd gone from being Piper, friend and confidant, to Piper, the nosy snoop. A lot of folks, they haven't treated me the same since. It started to feel like the only person I could count on was my little sis.”

Harvey smiled, looking Piper in the eyes. “Well, you can always count on me, Piper.”

“I know I can,” she said with a wide smile. “You're not afraid of me like everyone else. I was sure that the paper would be the best thing that I ever did in my life. But… being here with you, now… now I don't know.”

Piper let out a content sigh, smiling softly as she looked away from him. “I needed someone like you in my life for a long time, Blue,” she said quietly. “I just never expected I'd actually get them. So… thank you. For being the friend I can count on.”

He stopped looking at her, swallowing hard. Either this was going to go really well, or really poorly. “If I may be so bold…sounds to me like you're interested in becoming more than just friends.”

“Oh, I…” she paused, her eyes suddenly growing wide, but then relaxing as her face turned a shade of crimson. “I…I mean, I'd be lying if I said I never thought about you that way…” Just as suddenly, she became panicked, flustered almost. “Not that I'm always thinking that way! It's just…”

Piper shook her head, suddenly looking concerned. “Harvey, I'm loud and pushy and constantly getting in over my head. Why would someone like you ever want someone like me? Like… how could I ever compare to your wife?”

“You don't _need_ to be like her,” Harvey said, taking Piper's hands in his. “It's been…harder than I can even imagine losing Shannon. But you don't need to be flawless, Piper. You're perfect for me.”

“Perfect, huh?” she said skeptically, masking her fluster under a laugh. “That's a new one. Well… I think you're perfect too. God, I-I don't know what to say. You're everything I could ever ask for.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Harvey replied. He looked into her brilliant hazel green eyes, saw her smile that told him she had never before been this happy, this in love. She didn’t have to say the words. He remembered the way Shannon had first looked upon him like this, and if he didn’t know any better, he’d say Piper was meant to be like her. Harvey dared to inch closer, eyes flicking to her lips as her breathing suddenly became as rapid fire as a machine gun.

Slowly, he kissed her, happy to finally have found peace _somewhere._ The Commonwealth may not have made sense all the time, but this…this made sense. This was the one thing in Harvey’s life that was right. Just as slowly, he and Piper separated. Harvey opened his eyes to see her brushing away her hair, red-faced and incredibly flustered.

“Wow,” she muttered. “I… I really love you, Blue.”

He smiled, meeting her eyes. “I love you too, Piper.”

That night, Harvey left Nick, Diamond City, and Piper behind. The only trace that he had been there was a simple note on Piper’s desk that only said _“I’m sorry.”_


	9. The Devil's Due

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harvey roams the Commonwealth following his infiltration of the Institution.

Somehow, after about a week – or maybe two weeks, he had lost track of it – of wandering, Harvey found himself back in Goodneighbor. He had meant to come here to report back to a ghoul, someone who remembered the world before the bombs fell and had asked him to clear out Boston Public Library. Instead, he was in the Third Rail, drinking old whiskey and trying to forget the world. Two tough guys appeared, an instant red flag. Not looking for him – they headed to a side room. Wonder what they were up to. Harvey got a bad feeling about them though, following them. They stood in front of a man in a duster, cap pulled low over his face as he swirled a drink in his hand.

“Can’t say I’m surprised to find you in a dump like this, MacCready,” one in camo said, folding his arms.

“I was wondering how long it’d take your bloodhounds to track me down, Winlock,” MacCready said, smirking. “It’s been almost three months, don’t tell me you’re getting rusty.”

Winlock must have been the one in camo. Second fella, dressed in nondescript tactical gear with a bandanna over his face, sighed loudly.

“Should we take this outside?” MacCready asked, putting down the drink.

“It ain’t like that,” Winlock said. “I’m just here to deliver a message.”

MacCready stood up, and apparently none of them seemed to have seen Harvey standing by. “In case you forgot, I left the Gunners for good,” he declared.

“Yeah. I heard. But you’re still taking jobs in the Commonwealth. That isn’t going to _work _for us.”

Harvey checked his holster – M1911 still in it, ready to go if necessary. That’d help if things got messy.

“I don’t take orders from _you,”_ Macready said, jabbing a finger at Winlock. “Not anymore. So why don’t you take your girlfriend and walk out of here while you still can.”

“Winlock, tell me we don’t have to listen to this shit,” the third man said, brow furrowed. He was pissed off to high hell. That’d be a problem for him if shooting started.

“Listen up, MacCready,” Winlock growled, unfolding his arms. “The only reason we haven’t filled your body full of bullets is because we don’t want a war with Goodneighbor. See, we _respect_ other people’s boundaries, we know how to play the game. It’s something _you_ never learned.”

MacCready smirked, shaking his head as he shrugged off the obvious threat. “Glad to have disappointed you,” he said.

“You can play the tough guy all you want,” Winlock warned. “But if we hear you’re still operating inside Gunner territory, all bets are off. You got that?”

“You _finished?”_

“Yeah, we’re finished. Come on, Barnes.”

The two tough guys turned and began heading out, watching Harvey carefully as they passed by him. MacCready stood by as well, watching the two exit. Spotting Harvey, MacCready rolled his eyes almost immediately. “Look pal, if you’re preaching about the Atom, or looking for a friend, you got the wrong guy. You need a hired gun… _then_ we can talk.”

“Maybe,” Harvey said. “Who were the Yin and Yang twins?”

MacCready scoffed, smiling. “A couple of morons looking to climb the ladder of success by stepping on everyone else on the way up. Look, I don’t want the stink of those two clowns running off my business. How about you? How do I know I won’t end up with a bullet in my back?”

“I can give you my word, and some caps. What’s the price?”

At this, MacCready’s face lit up, and his smile became genuine. “Some caps, huh? Alright, hotshot. 250 up front. No room for bargaining.”

“Everything’s negotiable. 200.”

“You drive a hard bargain. Looks like you just bought yourself an extra gun.”

Harvey nodded, for now returning to the bar to drink at least a little more. MacCready didn’t much mind, partaking in a nice cold beer alongside him.

“Oi,” the Mr. Handy bartender said, “now that you’re liquored up, I got a proposition for you. Ready to hear it?”

“Go for it,” Harvey muttered, curious about what this was.

“I need someone _dirty_ to do some _dirty work._ Blood on the pavement. Bodies in the ground. That kind of thing. Interested?”

“Details first, then let’s see,” Harvey replied. Beer was warm. He thought they were supposed to be served cold.

“I got an anonymous client who’s paying top dollar for a cleanup job. Three locations, everyone inside, no witnesses. Only catch? It’s all in town in the old warehouses, so I can’t use my regulars. Too noticeable. That’s where you come in. 200 caps, payment when it’s done, and don’t worry…I’ll know when it is.”

Harvey rubbed his chin, taking a deep breath. He wasn’t much a fan of hiring himself out, but work was work. It’d distract him for a while longer. “Three locations is a lot of time. Lot of bullets.”

If the Mr. Handy had a face, Harvey was sure it would have soured almost immediately. “Listen you, I ain’t playing Ring-Around-The-Rosie with a hired gun. Now the client’s paying 200 for the job, 200 is what you’ll _get!”_

“Duly noted. I’m in.”

Well, new task to orient to. Harvey finished his drink, paying for the tab and left with MacCready, back into the lukewarm, indifferent embrace of Goodneighbor.

“Ugh, nothing says ‘welcome’ like the stench of urine-soaked garbage,” MacCready said as they stepped out to Goodneighbor’s alleys. First warehouse wasn’t too far away. Should be a simple breach and clear. Standard work.

“You ready for this job?” Harvey asked.

“Simple arrangement, you point and I shoot,” he said, shrugging.

First warehouse was locked. Not a big deal, he could pick this open. Work light illuminated the first room, leading up to a staircase. He could hear footsteps, but couldn’t place numbers. Could be a couple, could be a decent handful. Firefight got off to a rough start when one of them descended the staircase, prompting a shot from Harvey’s rifle. Numbers became solid when the others reacted to the rounds. Six of them. Sounded like they were assembled on the second floor. He and MacCready headed up the staircase, interrupting their card game and wiping the men out without difficulty.

Next one was practically right next door. Sounded like four in here. Quick firefight, not much else to do other than fire rounds and outwit a handful of guys who barely knew how to operate their weapon. Third warehouse was the same story, a breach and clear that took relatively little effort. The bartender gave Harvey the agreed-upon caps, ending Harvey’s involvement with Goodneighbor’s politics for at least a little while.

* * *

“Trade caravan, huh?” MacCready said, looking over the handful of guards that were already hanging around. “Didn’t think this was the kind of thing we’d be doing.”

“Pays well, something to do,” Harvey replied, loading up magazines with ammo. In a way, it was the truth. It was decent work, didn’t often get shot at, and other than the handful of Super Mutants that might be on the route, looked relatively safe. Plus, with the vest he’d been able to source, now he could carry a good six magazines on his instead of the four he had with the old chestrig. Upped ammo count to about 120 rounds, plus one more loaded into the rifle for a grand total of 140 rounds of 7.62 “fuck you.”

The route they were taking would have them heading northeast, starting in Diamond City. Thankfully, they could wait outside, and so Harvey wouldn’t end up running into Piper or Nick there. How long had it been since he had seen them again? His Pip-Boy said it was November. Must have been about June when he got himself out. Shit, it had been a long, _long_ time.

“Been a long time since I’ve been in Diamond City,” MacCready said. “You sure you don’t wanna go in?”

“I’m sure.”

Soon enough, the caravan began to join them outside, having loaded up on supplies and things to trade. Harvey and MacCready were relegated to the front, being new and therefore “untrustworthy” that they wouldn’t just shoot everyone else in the back and take off with the goods. The path to their destination was long, going through all sorts of side alleys and back streets to avoid raiders.

“I don’t like this,” MacCready said, cradling a Dragunov in his arms. “Something’s off.”

“Yeah,” Harvey agreed. “Keep scanning.”

MacCready gave him an odd look, but continued anyway as he softly sighed. Boston’s streets hid threats around every corner, even if the caravan said that they would be avoiding raiders. But judging by the bridge they were heading to, they might be in for trouble regardless.

“Christ,” MacCready said as they approached the bridge. Harvey could already see a barricade built up on it, a simple door meant to funnel people into a killzone. “This is prime ambush country.”

“I know.” Behind him, Harvey could hear the other caravan guards grumbling, preparing their weapons.

“This ain’t the first time we’ve tangled with raiders,” one of them said. “Stop being fucking pussies already! Fuck!”

A bullet crashed through his head, sparking the beginning of the firefight. Harvey and MacCready both had the same idea, diving for cover near a wrecked car on the right side of the street. He looked up, spotting a makeshift walkway between two apartment buildings, with a handful of gunners on top of it. What the hell was on their arms? Looked like some kind of armband.

Automatic gunfire began to ring out from both sides as the caravan traded fire with the raiders. They were caught in a classic killzone, with enemies up top in defilade. Fireteam on the ground advancing on the caravan. There was only one option, really – punch through. Harvey glanced at MacCready. He had the same idea.

“Suppressing fire?” Harvey asked.

“I hope those guys like lead for breakfast,” he snarked, checking his magazine.

MacCready popped out, firing on the gunners up top. Harvey broke from cover, taking shots at the ones charging out in the open towards them. One, two, three shots out, two down. Fourth and fifth shots took out a third. Another two shots to the raider hiding in cover. Wood wouldn’t protect that guy. Harvey heard him screaming.

He looked up, spotting the raiders up on the roof cowering. Their dead friends down here had grenades. It’d been a hell of a long time since he’d lobbed any grenades, but hell, had to pick that skill back up sometime. Harvey grabbed a grenade off one of the dead men’s belts, an old Chinese stick type. He pulled the pin, throwing it as hard as he could up to the roof.

“Oh shit!”

Seconds later, an explosion. He watched blood and parts of legs fall down, sent up to the sky by the concussive force.

Almost out of curiosity, he watched the blood fall down to the ground, which happened to draw his eyes to the dead raiders he had just shot. He could see the armbands more closely now. _What the fuck?_

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “Fucking Nazis. Do we _really_ have Nazis after the fucking world’s ended?”

MacCready put an empty mag into his pouch, heading over to Harvey with a confused look on his face. “The hell are you talking about?”

“Look at these fucks,” Harvey said, spitting on the dead raiders. “They’re Nazis. We fought a whole fucking war about this shit.”

MacCready cocked an eyebrow, nodding slowly. “Right… uh, whatever. We good here?”

Harvey sighed. This wasn’t fucking right. This wasn’t the America he had left behind. This was _not_ what his world was supposed to be. Who the fuck would ever subscribe to that sick, twisted ideology? This deserved payment. Someone was out there, spreading this monstrosity of an idea out there, and he would make sure they put an end to it. Kill every single fuck that ever believed in this bullshit.

“Hey, Harvey. Come on, man. Are we good here?”

“Yeah,” Harvey finally said. “We’re good.”

* * *

The caravan ended at Bunker Hill, mostly because half the caravan guards had been wiped out and the contractor wanted to offload the rest of the trip onto someone else. She argued long and hard with basically everyone around, trying to get someone to buy off the rest of her cargo. Didn’t look like it was working.

“Hey, Harvey,” MacCready said, leaning against the bar they drank at.

“What’s up?”

“We’ve been going around for a while, and you seem like a decent guy.”

Harvey scoffed. “Glad you think so.”

“I don’t think it’s unfair of me to ask to know a bit more about you.”

“You trying to pick me up on a date or something?”

MacCready sighed, shaking his head. He had a certain frustrated look about him – old soldier Harvey may be, he wasn’t totally blind to how people reacted and felt. There was _something_ troubling the guy, but what it was he couldn’t track. “No, listen, just… you don’t act like all my other clients, you know? I’m just gonna ask straight – are you a Gunner?”

“No.”

“You’re _sure?_ Because you act a fu-_heck_ of a lot like they do.”

Harvey slammed back the warm beer in his hands, wishing that people he brought along for his ventures into the wasteland would stop fucking asking this. He hated having to explain it every single time.

“Alright. You want the truth, MacCready? I’m over two hundred years old. I was a soldier in an _actual_ army before all this. Gunners don’t deserve respect, the title. They took the worst of my army and twisted it into whatever the fuck they call it.”

MacCready glanced over at him, his face betraying the shock and hurt he was feeling. What had he said?

“So, Gunners don’t deserve respect, huh?” He stiffened up, mouth dancing as if he wanted to say something else.

“What, you got a problem with it?”

“Nah, not really. Look, I don’t know if I buy the whole “200 years old” bit, but-”

“Oughta read the paper sometime. Diamond City had a whole story on it.”

MacCready scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, I don’t exactly pay many visits to Diamond City.”

“Look, believe it or not, it’s the truth. What were you going to say?”

He paused, sighing. “Alright. As long as we’re being all open and shit with each other. I used to roll with the Gunners. Left because they were assh-_idiots_. You saw the end result of that when you plucked me out of that bar in Goodneighbor.”

“Kind of figured it.”

“So, those di-_clowns_ are going to keep harassing me. I don’t usually ask this from my clients, but you’ve been a solid guy so far. I need help knocking them down a peg.”

Harvey nodded, looking around. “Something tells me this wasn’t your first plan.”

“No, it wasn’t. I was _going_ to buy them out, but there’s no telling that they won’t just shoot me and take the caps anyways. So, how’s about you and I pay them a visit before they get any bright ideas?”

“Alright. Where are they at?”

MacCready blinked, surprise washing over his face. “Awesome. I haven’t been able to rely on anyone since I was a kid. Let’s head over to the Mass Pike interchange to kick in their front door.”

* * *

Mass Pike Interchange. Harvey had been here a few times, before the war. Usually on his way to Fort Hagan, but it was also the easiest way to get to Providence. He always hated Providence. Too many people, full of beatniks and anti-war protesters that looked down on him and nearly caused riots every time he went out in his dress greens.

“They’re close by,” MacCready said, smoking a cigarette. As dark as it was getting, the light might give them away. “Look, still time to back out-”

“I hired you for a reason,” Harvey said. “What’s the plan?”

MacCready looked up, exhaling a puff of smoke away from Harvey. He glanced out to the barricade ahead, a makeshift thing of wood and old cars shoved up against one another. “Light’s low. Might not see us coming. I can keep you covered with my scope from here, but we’ve got to get in close.”

Harvey checked out MacCready’s rifle as he unslung it, racking the bolt back to check that there was a round loaded. Handguard had been through hell. The finish on the wood was wearing off, practically ground down to a pale, dull off-white wood. Magazine well wasn’t in much better shape. Lot of scratches and dings indicating fumbled attempts to reload. One of the adjustment knobs on his scope was missing, and whatever Chinese had been written on it was long gone.

“Alright,” Harvey said. “If things get hairy, I have a good handful of grenades.”

“Sounds great. Let’s do it, then.”

MaCready hung back, setting up a decent position with his rifle as Harvey began to close in. The sun was setting, casting an orange-reddish glow over the highway as shadows concealed exact enemy numbers. He could hear a machine gun turret chiming as he got closer. Did MacCready see it? He’d know when the shooting started.

A shot rang out from behind him, slamming into the machine gun turret’s housing and disabling it. This alerted the Gunners, who started shouting that they were under attack. _You bet you are, fellas,_ Harvey thought as he broke into a run. Car provided cover. First Gunner stood up, firing at him from behind the safety of a barricade. MacCready’s bullet proved to be a good effect on target, destroying his head immediately.

“You’re messing with the best!” one of them shouted. No more hostiles here. Rest were beyond their makeshift checkpoint. Harvey moved forward, hearing familiar boots behind him. MacCready must have been moving up to support.

“Where’s Winlock?!” MacCready shouted as he got close.

“Don’t know! Kind of have bigger problems here!”

He ducked out of cover for only a split second, jerking his head back in as an Assaultron’s laser burned the very air around him. How the hell had two-bit fuckfaces like the Gunners been able to source this kind of tech?

“I have not been programmed to fail,” the Assaultron taunted as its heavy metal feet stomped towards them. Harvey prepped a grenade, tossing it out blindly. MacCready peeked out at the same time and began firing, aiming for the Assaultron’s head. It had to make a choice between engaging them and dodging the grenade, but couldn’t do both. Grenade went off seconds later, wrecking its legs and ending it to the ground.

That wasn’t the end of its attack on them, however. More Gunners appeared, firing at them as the Assaultron literally crawled its way to Harvey and MacCready.

“Ready to rock and roll, old man?” MacCready shouted over the gunfire, rocking a magazine into his rifle.

“Just pray you can keep up, kid,” Harvey shot back.

The pair broke from cover, with Harvey destroying the Assaultron for good while MacCready charged forward. Multiple gunshots broke out, peppered with tell-tale automatic gunfire. Cover was sparse for Harvey and MacCready, but he expected that.

“What the _fuck_ is going on out here?” a voice shouted. Must have been Winlock.

MacCready paused, pointing at a Gunner stepping out of a trailer. “Oh shit, he’s getting into power armor! Stop him!”

Harvey dove into cover near the concrete dividers, rising up to start firing at the Gunner that was trying to hop into power armor. One shot to the leg made him hit the floor. Followup killed him. Next target – Gunner with some kind of sub machine gun. Another firefight erupted as Harvey and MacCready worked through the remaining Gunners, with both of the men MacCready sought out to kill having apparently fallen at some point in the mess.

When the last shots died down, MacCready sighed, looking over their work. “This ought to send the Gunners a message to stay off my back.”

“I’m sure they heard you loud and clear,” Harvey said.

“Yeah. For Gunners, it’s always about the bottom line. They just lost this entire waystation, and that’s gonna cost them big. Anyway, I guess I owe you a favor now for your help with that.”

Harvey smirked, chuckling. “Why? I hired you.”

“Yeah, but I dragged you all the way out here. Tell you what,” MacCready said, digging through his pockets. “I’m gonna give you back the fee I took from you in Goodneighbor. I’ll stick with you because that was part of our deal, but now we’re even. Lead on, boss.”

* * *

“Okay,” MacCready said, smoking a cigarette as he sat on an old, dusty chair. “Walk me through this again, because it is _not_ making sense to me.”

They had stopped near the ruins of what had once been a vibrant area, whereupon Harvey had seen fit to enlighten MacCready on his new course of action. Traveling with the merc and seeing the Commonwealth for what it really was had changed him, for better or worse. Right now, their debate room of choice was the former residence of a handful of raiders.

“I need to go make the Commonwealth better.”

“And you’re basing this on… what, exactly?”

Harvey sighed, looking down at the blood-stained floor. “Come on. You’ve seen it firsthand. Neo-Nazis raid people every day, recruit more for their bullshit and build up for their plan. Gunners have US Army tech, corrupt everything I stood for.”

“Okay, you never explained what the hell a Nazi is,” MacCready said, waving the cigarette around.

“That doesn’t matter right now.”

“Look, point is, you’re talking like a fuc-” MacCready drew a sharp breath, tilting his head and wincing. “Like a freaking Brotherhood Scribe right now.”

“It’s not _about_ people having tech,” Harvey explained. “It’s about people messing with things they shouldn’t. Those Assaultrons the Gunners have, those things can level entire towns. I saw them in action against the Chinese, and they were _more _than ready to demolish a town of Americans if it stood in our way.”

MacCready sighed, tossing the used cigarette away. “Okay, let me entertain this for a minute. Even if these raiders you say are a problem have a plan – which I doubt, but okay – do you really think their Jet-hopped brains can really carry it out? A-and the Gunners, they’re just a bunch of two-bit punks. They can’t do jack.”

“I just need you to trust me,” Harvey pleaded. “Can you do that for me?”

MacCready pulled out his box of cigarettes, frowning that it was empty. Groaning, he tossed the pack away, sending it sailing down to the street below them. “Alright, fine,” he finally muttered. “What do you need me to do?”

“By now, there’s two people out there looking for me. One of them is a detective, Nick Valentine.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard of the guy,” MacCready said, nodding. “Who’s the other?”

“She’s a…” Harvey said, pausing. What was even the right word? Piper was more than just a journalist to him. He knew that, if nothing else, she would never stop looking until she found the truth. All at once, a slurry of words swam in his mind. Friend. Lover. Confidant. The only woman who could come close to his wife.

“Any day now on the name, buddy,” MacCready said, irritated.

“Sorry,” Harvey said, blinking as he shook his head. “She’s a journalist. Piper Wright.”

MacCready cocked an eyebrow, confused. “The chick with the wacky paper in Diamond City? Huh, alright. So, what do you want me to do, shoot them if they get too close?”

“No, God no,” Harvey said. “Just… if either of them try to find me, and they make their way to tracking you down, give them something. I don’t care what, but it can’t be the truth.”

The mercenary sighed again, staring at Harvey intensely. “Okay. I can do that. But you owe me for this, got it? Whenever you get done with… whatever it is you gotta do, we’re gonna talk, yeah?”

“Of course,” Harvey said, nodding. He stood up, slinging his M14 on his back as he began to step off, only pausing for a moment to look back at MacCready. “And hey, MacCready. Thank you, truly. I know it’s a lot to ask-”

“Look, Harvey, I don’t need to know why you’re doing what you’re doing, okay? As long as you’re not joining some raider gang or turning me over to the Gunners, we’re square.”

Harvey nodded. At least soldiers didn’t change much in the 200 years he had been frozen. Well, time to head off alone again. Harvey walked out towards the wasteland, with a singular clear purpose in his mind.


	10. The Disappearing Act

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Piper tries to figure out where Harvey went.

_Where are you, Harvey?_

Not a single thing in his past supported what had happened. Piper had come up with every theory imaginable – drug use, alcoholism, some sort of underlying psychological condition, but nothing made sense. Even when everything was going to hell, Harvey seemed to be _adjusting,_ getting _used_ to the insanity around them. Nick agreed with her far too often on it – it just didn’t add up for Harvey to have left them one day without a word. Piper had thrown herself into trying to solve the mystery, collecting everything she could find on Harvey and pinning it on the wall. Strings lined connections between each clue she found, every lead, each half-baked theory, all the scraps of evidence she had uncovered.

Nothing ever came to the same conclusion.

Every time the door opened, she hoped Harvey would be walking through it, rifle on his back and a smile on his face. Preferably with enough good reasons for her to not just march right up to him and slap him across the face for having the sheer audacity to tell her he loved her and then vanish without a trace. But, instead it was just Nick, looking more worn-down than usual.

“Hey, Nick,” Piper muttered, sighing as her hopes were dashed once again. “Anything?”

He shook his head, lighting up a cigarette. “Another dead end. Who would have thought so many folk in the Commonwealth would look like our old friend?”

Piper rolled her shoulders back, trying to release some tension from staring at this stupid wall all day. Sometimes, she just wanted to tear it down, forget Harvey had ever existed. Every time she dared to rip one of her notes, something stopped her. Something prevented her from following through, but Piper was never able to put it into words. Right as she started to stare back at the wall full of subterfuge, rumors, half-truths, false leads and history, Nick wandered over, his smoke drifting through the air.

“It’s been eight months,” he said quietly. “Maybe we ought to consider he left the Commonwealth.”

Piper shook her head slowly, staring at the wall in front of her. “He wouldn’t do that. It doesn’t make sense.”

“People can surprise you. Maybe knowing his boy was leading the Institute was too much. Might have gone West.”

“With the Legion out there? I don’t think so.”

Nick sighed, a puff of smoke lazily wafting past her nose. Smelled like she expected 200-year old cigarettes to smell like. “World’s not as small as you think, Piper. There’s a lot of people out there, lot of ideas. Harvey might have decided some of them were worth listening to.”

“We would have heard about it, though,” she countered. “Not a lot of people try to recruit from the Commonwealth. The groups that are… well, you got the Brotherhood, Minutemen, Gunners… that’s all who it could have been.”

“I’m not sure if we want to ask that question,” Nick muttered. “Might not like the answers.”

Some days she wasn’t sure if the Institute had ever installed a “helpful” subroutine for Nick. Sure, he could solve crimes like nobody’s business, but God damn it, when it came to moments like this he was about as useful as a spoon with a hole in it. Her eye wandered over to the rifle Harvey had given her, lying against the wall. Empty, like a paperweight. Exactly how she felt, hanging around here. Maybe it was time to stop hanging around her office, and go out and actually _do _something. After all, that’s what Harvey had taught her. When you didn’t have any other options, go out and make some new ones.

Piper sighed, marching over, gripping the rifle by its sling and grabbing one of the magazines that went with it, still loaded with ammo. Just like Harvey had taught her – rock the magazine in, lock it back. It fell in place with a satisfying click, and the bolt – though still as stiff and heavy as she remembered – slammed back with a hearty slap as she chambered a round. She only had the two magazines, one of which was already in the rifle, but it was better than the pistol she used to carry around.

At least, that’s what Harvey always said.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Nick asked, staring at her.

She sighed, slinging the rifle on her back and trying to adjust it. God, she’d never be used to carrying this thing. “Well, I don’t think I can do a whole lot just sitting in this office. You know, hit the streets, Nick? See things for myself.”

“Listen, Piper,” Nick muttered, sighing and shaking his head with an exasperated look on his face. “I’ve been _doing_ that this whole time. I’m good, but Harvey’s good too. He knows we’re looking for him, and he’s covered his tracks. I don’t know what you can find that I didn’t.”

“Nick, just for _once_ can you shut up and let me do this? Please?”

Nick paused, a pensive look covering his face as he shifted his weight nervously. “Alright, fine. But you’re not going out there alone, got it? I’m coming with you.”

“If that’ll make you sleep better at night, sure,” Piper said.

Nick smirked, almost chuckled if Piper didn’t know any better. Together, the two left Piper’s office, heading out from Diamond City to chase a lead Nick had apparently found. Supposedly, at one point, Harvey had hired some mercenary in Goodneighbor. If anywhere, Hancock would have answers.

Between the two of them, Piper wasn’t sure how likely Hancock would be to give them those answers freely.

* * *

Nick and Piper walked the streets of the Commonwealth, much like she and Harvey had seven months ago. The route they took was almost the same one Harvey had taken Piper on when they were finding Nick in the first place. Every sight, smell, and echoing sound brought back a million memories for Piper, like coming across a group of raiders in some old, wrecked bar. That was the first time Piper had seen Harvey in action, watched him relentlessly destroy everything in front of him.

“Hey, so, I didn’t want to say this in your office,” Nick said, his shoes softly hitting the pavement below them. “But…”

“I know what you’re gonna say, Nick,” Piper replied, readjusting the strap on her shoulder. “I know _your_ leading theory is that he’s dead, but… I don’t think so. It doesn’t make sense.”

Nick sighed, looking off to the left to check down a particularly threatening alleyway. “Look, _you_ may not want to entertain the idea, but one of us is going to have to look reality in the face.”

“We would know. Just… trust me on this, okay? He’s alive. I wouldn’t be out here if I thought he was dead.”

A lonely, ominous wind blew past them, whistling in between broken buildings and sweeping away scattered, loose papers on the street. For the next few minutes, only the sound of Piper’s boots and Nick’s penny loafers could be heard, tracking an uncertain path.

“Something else you ought to know about,” Nick said, lighting up a cigarette. “Not sure if you heard about it or not. There’s been an increase in Institute activity.”

“That’s not funny, Nick.”

He sighed, a tail of smoke following his cigarette as he pulled it away. “I’m serious. Our mutual friend in the Railroad’s been passing me news that they’re seeing a lot of those Coursers running around.”

“We have to find Harvey first,” Piper said. “That’s more important.”

“I’m just saying, some of the things I’ve heard…”

Piper stopped in the middle of the street, clenching her fists and trying very, _very_ hard to not just sock Nick in the face right now. The idea that his metal bones would hurt more than any punch she could throw was honestly only half the reason she stayed her hand. After all, if Piper had fallen in love with someone who was doing the things Nick was insinuating…

“Nick,” Piper finally said, swallowing hard. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t just hear you say that.”

“I know you don’t want to think about it, but it’s an option we have to consider.”

“No!” Piper shouted, turning to face him in the street. “He wouldn’t _do_ that! You heard what he said to the Railroad! You know what he did for them! Does that sound like someone who’d turn his back on everything and work for the Institute?”

The detective could only offer a weary, beaten face in response as he slowly shrugged. “These days, I really don’t know anymore. I’m trying to source all our options.”

“Then maybe you’ve got a screw loose somewhere, Nick,” Piper shot back. _“He. Wouldn’t. Do. That.”_

Piper stomped off, readjusting the rifle on her back. Damn thing had slid off her shoulder a little when she started to march away. All she wanted was to find him, hold Harvey in her arms again and know that everything was alright. Why couldn’t she just have a normal life, without drama or danger? Was she just cursed? Or was this somebody’s idea of a sick joke? Either way, Piper just had to keep one foot in front of the other, to take her to Goodneighbor and demand answers out of Hancock.

* * *

Goodneighbor was exactly like Piper remembered. Dreary, on edge, and full of unfriendly faces around every corner. It was ironic, how the town claimed to be “of the people, for the people” and yet anyone who hadn’t already been living there for years was regarded as an outsider. To the people of Goodneighbor, if you weren’t from around there, you were not to be trusted, constantly watched, with everyone looking for a reason to pull the trigger.

The eyes of the so-called “Neighborhood Watch” among them didn’t much help. Piper heard them leering at them, deriding Nick and wondering if Piper was “the chick that wrote the paper.” Silently, she and Nick went up the spiral staircase to talk to Hancock, who was leaning back on an old couch and drinking the day away. His bodyguard, a stern-looking woman named Fahrenheit, stood by with her arms crossed.

“Oh, hey,” Hancock said, lifting his glass up at them. “Nick Valentine and Piper Wright. What do I owe the honor for you two to come down here and say hi to little old me?”

Piper rolled her eyes. Try as he might, he couldn’t charm her. “We’re looking for a friend of ours. Maybe you’ve seen him around?”

Hancock’s dark eyes, if only for a moment, lit up, and if he still had one left, she was sure she could see his eyebrow arching now. “Yeah, I know you two like the whole smoke and mirrors bit, but you’ve gotta narrow it down a little bit more than that. Who are we talking about here?”

“He’s the sort of fellow you don’t miss often,” Nick said, taking a screwdriver to his hand in order to adjust it. “Not unless he doesn’t _want_ you to see him.”

Hancock blinked, putting down his drink. “Wait, are we talking about that Deacon dude?”

“What?” Piper exclaimed. “No! Harvey! Come on, the Man Out of Time?”

“Oh! That guy, right!” Hancock said, knocking on his head as if to get his brain to work right again. “Okay, yeah. I’ve seen him around here. Been a while, though, he did some odd jobs for me.”

“Not to mention Bobbi No-Nose tried to get him to steal from you,” Fahrenheit chimed in, sizing Piper and Nick up even now.

Hancock laughed, nodding. “Yeah, that was pretty cool. Solid dude, put Bobbi down right when he should have.”

“I don’t really _care_ what he did or didn’t do,” Piper said, gritting her teeth. “When was he last here?”

“Look, I don’t keep track of who does and doesn’t come and go, you dig? Last I heard and saw, he hired some merc that was hanging out in the Third Rail, I haven’t seen him since. You happy?”

Nick put away the screwdriver, stretching out his hand. “This merc got a name?”

Hancock shrugged, a smug look on his face as he held his palms up. “I don’t know, McReady or something? He wasn’t bothering anybody, so I didn’t care.”

“Any idea where they went?” Piper asked.

“Didn’t I just say that I don’t pay attention to people unless they’re causing me problems?” Hancock shot back. “Look, you’re barking up the wrong tree if you wanna track this dude down.”

Nick sighed, lighting up a cigarette. “He’s right, Piper. Best we get out of here.”

Hancock smirked, raising a glass to them once more. “You guys have fun out there. Hope you find your man.”

* * *

As it turned out, tracking Harvey and his new mercenary friend wasn’t easy. While Nick constantly wondered who Harvey had tangled with that he felt it necessary to hire a merc, Piper focused more on trying to track the leads. Suddenly, the reports of two sharpshooters with deadly aim and an almost unspoken bond made a lot more sense. She didn’t know what had made the two fast friends, or if there was even anything more to it than just caps exchanged between them, but it was something. They tracked the odd jobs that needed a gun, the caravans that had been reported to have them on guard, practically dashing across the Commonwealth with every new hint.

And yet, it wasn’t enough. It seemed like every stop they went to, they had just missed Harvey and his mercenary friend. Nobody knew where he had gone off to, only following whatever paid and apparently provided opportunity. Rumors grew wild, out of control almost, as coded messages from Deacon told tales about some new Courser that eschewed the usual uniform and operated almost brazenly.

Piper couldn’t find time to care. She had to find Harvey.

“Piper,” Nick said, waving a hand in front of her face. “You there?”

“Yeah,” she said, blinking. “What’s up?”

Nick arched an eyebrow at her, concerned. “Well, I’ve been talking to you for the past five minutes, but you haven’t said a word. It’s… unusual, I guess.”

“Sorry, I’m just… really distracted, I guess.”

She couldn’t exactly hide it, could she? Every time Piper looked in a broken mirror, or into the only decent sources of clean water, she saw the worry written on her face. It was like all the exposé articles she wrote, a long-winded tell-all that, unfortunately, was right far too often.

“Hey, we’ll find him, alright?” Nick said, his metal hand gingerly patting her on the shoulder. “I know we will.”

Piper sighed. She had scarcely lost track of where they even were by now. Maybe outside Bunker Hill by now? Did it even matter? She looked out to the abandoned, lonely street, spotting someone approaching them. Looked like someone in a leather getup, with armor to match. He didn’t carry himself like a mercenary. The pair of stupid sunglasses on his face gave it away. She’d know Deacon’s shades anywhere. Why did he insist on wearing those stupid things?

“Hope I didn’t spook you guys,” Deacon said, looking around. “A little birdie says the Minutemen have a new general.”

“Really?” Nick asked, surprised. “Huh. Thought they were all but wiped out.”

Deacon nodded, shoving a hand in a pocket. “Yeah. They were. But, this new general they’ve got? He’s been rebuilding it from the ground up. They took the Fort yesterday, fought a Mirelurk Queen and everything.”

“Wait, are you serious?” Piper asked, blinking. “Who _is_ this guy?”

The local spy shrugged, shaking his head. “Nobody knows. My Minuteman contact says he’s never met the guy in person, all the orders come from someone named Preston Garvey, but he’s definitely not the General.”

“So… why come down here and tell us this?” Piper questioned, shaking her head in disbelief. Was this really what Deacon spent his time doing? Showing up and telling people random things?

“I think it might be Harvey,” Deacon confessed. “I know I don’t have a confirmation, but… the way my contact talks about this guy, he seems pretty serious.”

“If only we could get a meeting with the guy,” Nick mused. “Figure Garvey’s the kind of fellow to take questions from the press?”

Piper sighed, shifting her weight around. “Something tells me we won’t get much if we go to him. I don’t know Nick, I think following his trail with this mercenary is better.”

Nick nodded, stomping out a cigarette. “Alright, if that’s what you think is best. I’ll follow you.”

“You two stay safe out there,” Deacon said. “I’ll bee seeing you around.”

Piper gripped the old leather sling attached to her rifle, trying to compensate for the shift in weight as she started to walk again. It felt like there was a million miles between her and Harvey right now, with no ability to close the distance in sight.

Maybe more than anything, she really just wanted things to be back to normal.

* * *

If she didn’t know any better, Piper would have thought Harvey had set this all up just for them.

But, instead, there was just some pissed-off looking mercenary standing in front of them, aiming his rifle with a deadly glint in his eye. He stood on top of some kind of guard post, a tattered tan jacket adoring his torso and stocked to the brim with bandoleers, bullets and pouches, all attached to a wide belt. His face betrayed almost nothing beyond a commitment to shooting people that got in his way, and right now, it looked like Nick and Piper were in that category.

“So,” the mercenary challenged. “Do you guys have names or what?”

“That depends. Who’s asking?” Nick said.

“The guy with the gun,” the mercenary shot back, aiming it towards Piper. “You. Do you feel like cooperating?”

“My name’s Piper Wright,” she said, holding her hands up. God, this was getting tiring. “And my idiot clockwork private eye friend here is Nick Valentine.”

“Come on, you _know_ it’s ‘synth detective,’” Nick complained.

“You’re looking for Harvey, aren’t you?” he asked, still holding the gun tightly.

Piper sighed, finally thrilled to have a solid lead for once. “Yes, thank God, _someone’s _seen him. Can you-”

“Hold on,” he said harshly. “I didn’t say he was _here,_ sunshine. He broke off a week ago.”

“So where’d he go? Hope he at least paid you.”

The mercenary took a sharp breath, readjusting the grip on his gun. “He paid his debt, okay? Listen, just fu-” He pursed his lips, shutting his eyes for a second before staring back at them with a harsh look on his face. “Go away and go look for him somewhere else, alright? He’s not here.”

“Wait, hold on, you’re McReady, right?”

The merc sighed, rolling his eyes in clear exasperation. “Jesus Christ, I told those idiots a million times, my name is _MacCready._ Where’d you hear that name from?”

“Friendly Goodneighbor mayor Hancock,” Nick said. “Didn’t seem to know much about you.”

“Alright, well, whatever, you got the record straight. Like I said, _go away._ Harvey’s not here.”

Piper let her hands fall to her side, scowling. If he really wanted to, he could shoot her. Piper knew if this guy was friends with Harvey, there was no way he would let him shoot her. “For someone who’s not here, Harvey sure is influencing you a lot.”

MacCready raised the rifle up to his face, a stark difference to the somewhat relaxed way he held it before. “I’m serious. Go look for him somewhere else.”

“Or you’ll what?” Piper challenged, ignoring Nick’s quiet requests to back off. “Shoot me? Harvey would never let you do that, and we both know it. So tell me, _where is Harvey?”_

“I don’t know!” MacCready shouted. “How many times do I have to tell you that?!”

“Until I start to believe you! You had to have known where he went, because _everything_ is coming back to _you!”_

MacCready swallowed hard, a soft metal clicking telling her he might have taken the safety off on his weapon. “I’m telling you _one last time._ I don’t know where he went. _Fuck off_ and go look somewhere else.”

Piper felt Nick’s hands on her arms, trying to keep her from charging MacCready. Her cheeks were flushed with anger, every fiber of her being calling out to do something, wipe the smug look off this clown’s face, do _something_. She could hear someone behind them. Who else wanted to tangle with her today? Her righteous fury knew no bounds today, it seemed.

“MacCready,” a far too familiar voice said. “There something I ought to know about here?”

Like a rushing wave, it was as if Piper’s stress and anger and worry had washed away as she turned around. There stood Harvey, looking as if he hadn’t changed a bit. Sure, he still carried himself like someone 200 years late to the party, and his combat kit was as shapeless as ever, but _goddammit_ he was _here._ He looked at Piper first, looking down and slinging that old rifle of his on his back.

“Hey, Piper.”

She sighed, feeling her shoulders drop as the rifle slid off her back. She felt a lump in her throat as she approached as her eyes welled up. God, it had been so long since she had seen him, it felt like years had gone by. Piper slowly walked over to Harvey. He looked like he had seven years of worry etched on his face, hard lines on his forehead, around his mouth, under his eyes like battle scars.

The first thing Piper did when she reached him was slap him across that stupid, stupid fucking face of his. The tears rolled down her face as she watched him take the hit like a champ, only barely flinching and closing his eyes. Harvey swallowed, his beard dancing as he slowly opened his eyes to look at her.

“Yeah,” he said. “I deserved that.”

“You’re fucking right you do,” Piper said shakily. “How could you _do_ that to us?”

Harvey nodded. “I can explain it. Truly, I can. Just… not here. Can we go somewhere else?”

Piper slowly and deliberately breathed in and out, counting back from ten. If nothing else, she couldn’t afford to stay pissed off at him forever. At least, not before hearing him out. If she didn’t hear a good explanation, _then_ she could go back to being angry. But right now, life was back to normal.

* * *

“So, that’s where I’ve been,” Harvey admitted, sitting on an old chair in the CIT Law Offices.

Piper wasn’t honestly sure she had heard right. Even after asking him to repeat it twice, hearing the same story a second time, she _still_ didn’t think it was right. MacCready stood in the corner, smoking without a care in the world. Next to her, Nick sat in an equally old chair, hand resting on his chin as he wrestled with it all. Piper… Piper didn’t really know what she was thinking, truth be told. Her jubilation that Harvey was back, was _safe,_ had quickly been overwhelmed by the knowledge that, of all the people in the Commonwealth he could have sided with, he had chosen the Institute.

“I don’t get it,” she finally said, breaking the silence. “Why?”

Harvey nodded, the chair he sat on creaking with every little adjustment he made. “I came to a realization while I was traveling. For a long time, nothing in this world made sense. In a lot of ways, it still doesn’t. But, I have the unique knowledge of knowing what the world was like before the bombs dropped. What’s in this world now is chaos… but I can help bring that chaos under control.”

“Harvey,” Nick said slowly. “Are you hearing yourself talk right now? Do you know what you’re saying?”

“I know exactly what I’m saying,” Harvey replied, staring Nick dead in the eyes. “I know there’s going to be reservations-”

“You think so?!” Nick demanded, kicking the chair back with a sudden burst of energy. “Harvey, don’t you have any idea what they did to me in there? What they do even now?”

“Look, I _know_ the Institute hasn’t had a great track record, but I can reform them. They’re making advancements in there that wouldn’t be possible anywhere else in the world. They have food, _real_ food, a sustainable program to help the Commonwealth.”

Nick shook his head, turning to face Piper. “Listen, we should seriously consider that we are talking to a Synth right now.”

“What?” Piper asked, furrowing her brow. “Nick, you can’t-”

“I’m _not_ a synth,” Harvey said, irritated. “There is a _lot_ more going on here than you think-”

“Isn’t it just a little _too_ convenient?” Nick theorized, ignoring Harvey. “Piper, come _on,_ I know you think it too. He goes missing for seven months and then shows up just in the nick of time? I don’t believe in coincidences, but…”

He gestured to the man sitting across from them, much to Harvey’s chagrin and discomfort. Piper shook her head, trying to work through a fog of emotions all her own. “I just… Harvey, just… I don’t know. You know this doesn’t make any sense, right?”

Harvey sighed, sitting back straight as he pensively looked at them. “I know. I know how crazy it sounds, but it’s all true. Again, I know that the Institute isn’t popular, feared. I’m telling _you,_ you all know me. You know my story. You know what kind of man I am. I’m not going to let the worst happen to the Commonwealth.”

“That’s a nice speech,” Nick said, barely concealing his disgust. “How long did the Institute drill you on it?”

“You can believe it or not, Nick. At this point, I knew I would lose friends over it. Just… I need you all to trust me. Please?”

Nick shook his head, stepped out of the room as he sighed heavily. “I don’t know if I can anymore, Harvey.” His footsteps faded away, until disappearing completely with the sound of a door closing. Harvey himself didn’t seem fazed by it, silently sitting there with his hands on his knees.

“Well, MacCready?” he said. “Are you walking out too?”

MacCready tossed aside a cigarette, stomping it out without even a hint of dramatic flair. “I told you I’d stand by your side as long as you were good to me. I wouldn’t be more honored to have anyone else at my side.”

Harvey nodded, looking to Piper now. “Well? What about you?”

She sighed, trying to hide how stressed and confused and just… _anxious_ this entire ordeal was making her. Piper hadn’t expected this of all things to come from Harvey. Join the Brotherhood, maybe, but the Institute? The fucking _Institute?_ Somehow, that was just worse than every other theory she had. And, of course, she kicked herself for not thinking about it.

“What do you want me to say, Harvey?” Piper asked. “I… I don’t know what to think anymore.”

He nodded, shifting his weight in his chair. “Would you consider coming with me into the Institute? See it for yourself and what they can do?”

Piper blinked, unsure if she was actually hearing this. Was… was this actually an offer to go inside the Institute? On one hand, _wow_ talk about story of the _century,_ but also… maybe Nick’s theory had some sense to it. Maybe he _was_ a synth replacement, and this… this was some kind of trap, a ploy to get her to be where she’d be most vulnerable. On the other hand though… this was _Harvey._ He had _never_ led her into a situation where she would be in danger before, and Piper didn’t think he’d start doing it now, synth or not.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll go with you.”


	11. There, Over There, Across the River

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What Harvey has done to the Institute is revealed.

Piper didn’t quite understand how the teleportation tech worked, but… well, in the long run it didn’t matter. She hit the floor, actually _cold_ somehow. Impossibly white walls lined the area, with some kind of console in front of her. Piper looked around, expecting skeletal Gen 1 synths to have surrounded them as Harvey ripped off his face to reveal he too had been a synth all along, but instead… they were alone.

His hand appeared in front of her, offering to help her off the floor. Gingerly, Piper took it, feeling as if with every movement she was dirtying up what was meant to be the cleanest place in the world. Everything about this place was creepy. No people. No activity. Virtually no noise beyond their footsteps and the electrical humming of the lights as they neared an elevator.

Piper didn’t quite know what to expect as the elevator descended, bringing her to the ground floor – was it even the ground floor? Did that matter when it was all underground? - of the Institute, a hodgepodge of scientists milling around. Gen 1 synths, in stark contrast to the terrifying presence they had on the surface, were more of fact of life here, sweeping floors, performing maintenance, and generally just… being glorified janitors, it looked like.

“Welcome to the Institute, Piper,” Harvey said. “Do you want me to give you an actual tour, or would you rather see it for yourself, at your own pace?”

She blinked, unintentionally blanking. Piper didn’t expect to have more or less free reign over the place. “Uh, I… lead the way?”

Harvey smiled, locking his arm around hers as he escorted her around the Institute. There was a sense of… comfort, almost, in his arms as he guided her around. Like the glares of the scientists didn’t matter, because once they say Harvey their gaze softened. The synths ducked away, clearly afraid of something, but it wasn’t Harvey. The clean white walls and dreary grays of the floor tiles seemed less oppressive, and more like a manicured image.

He took her up a glass ramp, lined with metal railings that were flanked by small flowing rivers of water. Actual, _clean_ water, water so clear she could see her own reflection in it, and it flowed almost like glass. Grass greener than she had ever thought possible covered the apex of the slope, with honest-to-god trees marking their approach. A pair of green lines showed the way into a department called Bioscience, with a decontamination array flanked by a rounded, tall entrance in front of a pair of sliding doors.

Inside, she saw an impossibly lush laboratory, filled with all sorts of plants. Some Piper could recognize – razorgrain, tatos, carrots – but others looked strange, just barely familiar enough and yet, different enough that it was uncanny.

“Everything in here,” Harvey said, gesturing to the lines of planters that dominated the circular room, “grew on the surface before the War. All of this was _alive_ up there.”

She looked it all over, even nibbled on something Harvey called an onion. Despite the bitterness of it, she had to admit it was better-tasting than anything else she had eaten in the Commonwealth.

But what really drew Piper’s attention was the bizarre animal locked behind a glass plate. “What… is _that?”_ Piper asked, pointing at the thing.

“That’s a gorilla,” Harvey replied, nonchalantly. “This is what one of the scientists here is doing. He’s bringing back creatures that had been lost forever.”

She cocked an eyebrow at the thing, watching it stare curiously at her. “Are we sure we even _want_ some of these back? Deathclaws are bad enough.”

“The world lost a lot of things when the nuclear bombs hit, Piper. Come on, there’s more.”

They left Bioscience, making their way down a flight of stairs past a circular staircase, and then up another ramp. Piper just now realized the stripe on the floor had changed, this one blue, leading to a place called Advanced Systems. This room was filled with computers, stacked to the brim with theorems and ideas and equations that didn’t make much sense to Piper, and even Harvey admitted it didn’t do much other than make new weapons, and thus they spent little time here.

He rushed her past a place only referred to on the signs as SRB, claiming that, while only necessary as long as Shaun was leader of the Institute, under his leadership it wouldn’t be necessary. Piper did not need to guess twice to see why he didn’t want her in there – a soldier stood guard outside of it, a laser rifle in his hands and eyeing them.

Which, of course, left robotics next. She wasn’t sure what to expect, really, but the sight of bare skeletons being moved around, which then became filled with meat, muscles, organs, and the entire nervous system of a human body was nothing but terrifying. She had never much thought about what it meant to make a gen 3 synth before, but she had never expected them to just rise out of a pool of red, totally naked. How many were they making each day here? Each _hour?_ A horrific fascination overcame her as she found herself mesmerized by the process, watching each one march off to a door called Processing, where they disappeared to go who-knows where.

Harvey led Piper to a room on the second floor, up a spiral staircase, with a grand window that overlooked the central atrium of the Institute. If it was even possible, this room felt even cleaner than any other place she had been in. Harvey sat across from her, slowly taking her hands in his and squeezing them tightly. For a moment, she could forget where she was, what she had seen, but that moment faded just as quickly as it had ever come.

“So, you see now, Piper,” Harvey said. “The Institute is much more than you ever thought. With the technology, the knowledge they have here… we can do a lot of good for the Commonwealth.”

“You say that, Harvey,” Piper said, sighing heavily. “What about infiltrating places? Replacing people? You can’t help people by making them afraid.”

He too sighed, looking down at the floor. “I know. It’s… the scientists here, they don’t understand what it’s like up there. But I _do._ I’ve been chosen to lead the Institute. And when I do, I can reform them. Under me, this infiltration, replacing people… it’ll stop.”

“Do you really think they’ll listen? They’ve been doing this for _years,_ Harvey.”

“These people understand how organizations work. They’ll understand that they don’t need to agree with my orders. They just need to carry them out.”

Piper looked back at him as he tilted his head back up, offering a warm smile to her. There were just something that could never change. Even after all of this, after everything he had admitted, she still saw him as the same broken man that had admitted to only feeling whole again with her. Part of her wanted to discount everything he had ever said, but seeing everything the Institute had behind it, she could never believe that they could win now. Piper could believe that, before she came here, saw how many synths they were making, that a war was winnable, but now, knowing the production speed, knowing just how committed Harvey could be alone, she knew it was impossible.

“Well,” Piper finally said, swallowing hard. “I guess that’s it then, huh?”

His smile faded, a confused, concerned look crossing his face. “What do you mean?”

Piper sighed, slowly withdrawing her hands from his. “You’re part of the Institute now. I… Harvey, I don’t know if I can trust things are going to change.”

“I know it’s hard to believe,” Harvey said. “Things _will_ change. I’ll make sure they do. You’re welcome to stay here, if you want I can get Nat here too, and…”

“I don’t think I want her here,” Piper said back almost immediately. “I… I need to take some time to think about all this, Harvey. Can you just… I don’t know, get me back to Diamond City? Without just showing up in the market or something?”

Harvey paused, looking off to the side. He looked hurt, and honestly, why wouldn’t he be? She could hear a frustrated, low sigh escape his lips. “Alright,” he said, nodding. “I can do that. Piper, if you ever want to… I don’t know, maybe try things again, just… ask to see me at the Fort.”

“How are you supposed to get that kind of message when you’re down here?” Piper asked, cocking an eyebrow at him.

“I have my ways,” he replied. “You… you should head up to the relay to get back home. I’m sorry I couldn’t be better for you, Piper.”

Piper solemnly nodded, getting out of the chair and making a lonely, glare-filled walk to the relay. She stood in the middle of the Institute itself, the elevator taking her up far slower than she wished, with practically every eye of the Institute upon her.

Once again, as she stood in the relay room waiting for that awful drop to hit, Piper was alone.

* * *

Of all the people she expected to see outside her door when she got to Diamond City, Deacon was not one of them. The rain poured down, reminding her of how truly terrible the world had truly become.

“Hey, Piper!” Nat shouted, waving at her from underneath their newsstand’s awning. “Can you believe it? This guy wanted _all_ of our papers!”

Piper shook her head, ducking under the awning as she slipped her way out of the rain. Deacon was good, but he wasn’t _that_ good. “Hey, Nat, thanks for keeping the shop up while I was gone. Mind heading inside so I can… _talk_ to our new customer?”

“Yeah, sure. I got some homework anyway.”

The steel door to their house opened and closed, and Piper sighed as she waited for Nat to step away. Though, she was pretty sure she’d be hanging close by anyway. Piper flicked her hands, trying to dry off at least a little, but it wasn’t really helping. She was positively soaked, dripping wet from the rain.

“So, I heard from a friend you managed to find Harvey. Where’s he been all this time?”

Piper leaned against a printing press, shaking her head. What was she supposed to say? _How_ could she say it? Maybe the direct approach was the best. “He’s leading the Institute now, plans to reform it.”

Deacon stared at her, sliding his sunglasses down to reveal his blue eyes, filled to the brim with incredulous disbelief. He blinked twice, before breaking out in a hearty laugh. “Wow, that’s a _good_ one, Piper. You had me going for a second there! No, really, where’s he been?”

She merely sighed, folding her arms pensively. Did he really need her to spell this out? Couldn’t Deacon just take the hint already?

“Okay, your stone-cold face is telling me that’s not a joke,” Deacon muttered, his smile falling. “What… is this like, some kind of long-con game Harvey’s got or something?”

“I don’t know,” Piper admitted, shaking her head again. “I really wish I could tell you, Deacon. Can you just… do me a favor, and buzz off for a while? Thanks.”

Deacon shifted his weight, opening his mouth as if he wanted to say something. But, if the words ever wanted to come out, he wouldn’t – or couldn’t – let them. “Alright then,” he said quietly. Deacon lit up a cigarette, stepping off Piper’s front porch and into the rain, quickly becoming part of the Diamond City crowd once again.

For her part, Piper slowly went inside, trying desperately to hide from the pain.

* * *

Harvey had scarcely recognized that it was the end of a full year since he had woken up in the Vault. It seemed like a lifetime ago. Regrettably, his time with Shaun had been short, since by the point Harvey had been brought in from the cold, so to speak, his son’s cancer had already overwhelmed his body. In the end, Harvey rationalized, there was little he could do. Not even the best medical science in the world could save a man from something as destructive as cancer.

But now, as Director of the Institute, Harvey had a new purpose. A new goal. Today would be the first day he would be acting as Director in full capacity, up until now he had been acting as the Institute’s main influence on the surface, a go-between for the Institute and the Minutemen. Harvey cleared his throat as he stepped inside the meeting room, bringing the eyes of the heads of each department to him.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, taking a seat at the head of the room. “Thank you are for coming in today. I understand many of us are still mourning the loss of Shaun, but we must continually move forward.”

Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Drs. Ayo and Holdren nodding in agreement. Harey shuffled a few of the papers in front of him, clearing space to start taking notes. He already had a few of his own, primarily on the new direction to take the Institute. Shaun had built a great thing here, but like many things, Harvey saw ways to improve it.

“Let’s get right down to it. Dr. Ayo, uh, I don’t have all of Shaun’s notes yet. Where are we conducting surveillance and general reconnaissance?”

Dr. Ayo’s eyebrows shot up, and he wet his lips. “Uh, well, we had only concerned ourselves with the Commonwealth. There were limited incursions into the so-called Capital Wasteland, but-”

“Why are you only focusing on the Commonwealth?” Harvey asked, looking up with a furrowed brow. “What possible reason could you have for failing to monitor other areas?”

“Well, uh, Father decided it best to-”

“So you willingly blinded yourself to the world in order to satisfy Shaun’s orders? Are you insane?”

Dr. Ayo swallowed, pursing his lips. “Well, we wanted to fulfill Father’s wishes, of course, but we couldn’t devote all of our resources to looking for synths, recovering them, _and_ monitoring the outside world all at once.”

“I see,” Harvey said flatly. “Alright then. Effective immediately, I want to know what’s happening out there. I want to know what’s going on in Washington, up north, out West, _everywhere._ I want to know what’s happening in the entire continental United States, do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir, but how-”

“That brings me to my next point for your department. Effective immediately, we are ceasing all long-term infiltrations.”

Dr. Ayo’s eyes bulged wide, and he sputtered as he gripped the table to steady himself. It was almost as if he couldn’t fathom such a measure. “B-but sir! How do you expect us to conduct surveillance if we don’t have our eyes and ears?!”

Harvey smiled. “It’s simple. We still use them, but we will _not_ be kidnapping people any longer and replacing them with synths. You have an entire army of Coursers at your disposal. _Use them._ I want you to retrain them to be able to slip in like any merchant or traveling mercenary, to act undetected to find information.”

“If I may, sir,” Dr. Li said. “This method of infiltration has given us great dividends. Why are we suspending this program now?”

“I don’t know if you’re all aware of this,” Harvey said, putting down his pen. “But the Institute does _not_ have a good reputation on the surface, and it’s precisely because of the persistent – and true- rumor that the Institute kidnaps people and replaces them with synth copies. Now, I don’t know about any of _you,_ but I would be pretty damn distressed to find out my wife was replaced in the night by a synth. We can do a lot of good for the Commonwealth, but we can’t continue operating on fear. We need the Commonwealth to trust us, to _help_ us. We can’t do that if they’re afraid of being killed.”

“Sir, this discontinuation of previous protocols puts us _dangerously_ low on potential information and future tracking. How are we supposed to recover synths if you deprive us of our surveillance methods?”

“We don’t. A synth that wants to come home can be recovered in any normal manner. We will not be limiting our synths to simply be _tools_ or _machines_ to serve us.”

“That’s _exactly_ what it is!” Dr. Ayo shouted. “The synths don’t _have_ consciousness, a _soul!_ What sort of drivel-”

Harvey kicked his chair back, standing tall and planting his hands on the table to star down Dr. Ayo. “Did I stutter, Doctor? You may be willing to reject the reality in front of you, but I understand what we’re really seeing here. You gave a being sense, reason and intellect, and you want them to _not_ use it? What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?”

He scanned the room, watching the surprised looks on their faces slowly freeze in place. He sighed, bowing his head. “Let me make this clear,” Harvey said, looking up. “The synths that you have spent your whole lives deriding and looking down on are not the simple machines you believe them to be. It is time we treat them as equals, and if you don’t want to do that, then you know _damn well_ where the door is. Do I make myself clear?”

The four department heads reluctantly nodded, each one trying hard to avoid his gaze. He smoothed out his clothes, settling back into the chair. He’d have to fix this, talk to each head and make sure they understood how the Institute would see itself into the future.

* * *

It had taken a month of readjustment, but Harvey and the Institute as a whole were ready. The Railroad had proved a constant thorn in their sides, despite the newly-found autonomy given to the synths. Of course, destroying the Railroad would have to take place swiftly, and efficiently. Harvey had been in their headquarters long enough to know their symbols, know their organization. The only thing that would be difficult would be finding Deacon. With his ability to change his appearance so easily, he could very well go into the wind.

Of course, that assumed he wasn’t already on his way out. It’d have to be done quick. Needed to have them all in there. He hadn’t been spotted or reported as an agent of the Institute yet. They could plausibly believe that he was working for them. Harvey knew that their guard system was incredibly lacking, no sentries posted outside, and reliant on being hidden from the public eye.

However, the secrecy that surrounded them only helped when your enemies didn’t already know where you were.

Harvey’s plan to assault them was twofold – surround the Institute and all known exits from their safehouse with an army of well-trained synths. Harvey would go in under the guise of making contact, with four Coursers behind him with Stealth Boys as backup. He could tell them everything – that the Institute was building up, planning to establish greater control.

In a way, he did admire their principles, even if he didn’t believe that their efforts were well-directed. He had once believed in their ideals, but with the reformation of the Institute, their public goals that now aligned with what Harvey intended to do now caused conflict. That conflict had to be resolved, and the Institute would never back down.

The fight was brutal, locked in close quarters combat. Casualties for the Railroad were high, as expected, with no survivors remaining. Desdemona had suspected him of deceit almost the minute he walked in, but the others had been accepting, even thought that he was to be trusted. In the end, that had been their downfall. Desdemona had been first to fall, with gunshots echoing in the catacombs underneath the Old North Church for hours, synth and human bodies alike falling.

Harvey toured the remains of the chaos, stepping over dropped weapons, severed limbs, and pools of blood. All of these bodies were ones he recognized. Desdemona. Tinker Tom. Doctor Carrington. Drummer Boy. P.A.M. was in the corner, destroyed. Glory died as she lived, in a blazing inferno. Like he had expected, the names of each safehouse had been listed on the wall, and if his timing was right, each one was being destroyed right now.

The only problem he had right now was that none of these bodies were Deacon’s.

“The area appears to be clear, sir,” X6-88 said, slowly walking up behind him.

“Good. Head back to the Institute. I’ll find Deacon and Nick.”

X6-88 nodded, his boots stomping over the broken stone and bodies alike. One enemy down. One more to go.

* * *

Harvey stood back, watching from a hill as the battle for Boston International raged on. The Minutemen had been able to bring artillery to bear against the Brotherhood of Steel, a surefire addition to already extremely lethal combat. He could see the fires starting to consume the _Prydwen_, pieces of metal slowly falling down to the ground. A massive, overwhelming explosion consumed the _Prydwen,_ bringing a smile to Harvey’s face. There was no way anyone could survive that.

“Harvey,” a familiar voice called out. He turned to see Piper, staring at the chaos behind him in horror. “You… you’ve changed.”

“No, this is how it was always supposed to be,” Harvey said. “I’m making the Commonwealth safe by removing people who think the general public can’t be trusted with technology. This is the fear that I’m trying to remove from the Institute.”

“Do you think this is _helping?”_ Piper asked, stilted and disbelieving breathes huffing out of her mouth. “You started a _war!”_

“A war that would have consumed the entire Commonwealth if I hadn’t made this happen,” Harvey answered. “You and I both know that the Brotherhood would have come for the Institute sooner or later.”

Piper ran her hands over her face, fists clenching and opening alternatively as a distressed look flooded over her. “I don’t know who you _are_ anymore. There isn’t anything left of the confused, scared Vault dweller I interviewed back then.”

Harvey sighed, looking down to the ground. “Piper, I know we’ve had this conversation before. Are we really going to rehash this?”

“You know what, you’re right, Harvey. We _have_ had this conversation before. If you really think this is what’s best for the Commonwealth, then… then I don’t know. I think we’re done here.”

He didn’t need to look up to know what was happening next. The sound of Piper’s boots heading away from him was all he needed to hear. He thought out of everyone, Piper would have understood, would have been willing to keep an open mind.

Maybe he had been wrong all along. Wouldn’t have been the first time that happened.

* * *

Deacon, thus far, had still eluded his grasp. Harvey wasn’t inclined to allow him to build up another resistance group that could undermine the Institute, especially not with a leader that knew as much as Deacon did. But, he couldn’t much help it right now, not while Deacon was still underground and able to hide himself.

But, Harvey could reliably find Nick. It was easy, as reluctantly as he had been to undertake it. Give Nick somebody to help, and he couldn’t resist. He had managed to track Nick down to the interior of Boston, where hiding among the people was relatively easy. But, Nick couldn’t hide forever. The rain was pouring down harder than he could recall in recent history, highlighted by flashes of lightning every other minute, as Harvey approached an abandoned comic book store.

The door creaked as he ventured inside, the stench of a dozen dead feral ghouls overwhelming him. Just in case Nick had missed them, Harvey unholstered his M1911, keeping it in low ready position as he headed up the wrecked stairs. Each step groaned in protest as he headed up, but there was no noise from up top where he knew Nick would be. Nick might have realized the jig was up. If he did, then that would make this a lot easier.

“So, you found me,” Nick muttered, a lone cigarette glowing against his face as a flash of lightning shadowed him. “Well, what’s it going to be? Shoot me or reprogram?”

“Neither,” Harvey said. “Nick, you know I can’t let you roam the Commonwealth.”

“Great, it’s gonna be a reprogramming, then,” Nick groaned. “Hey, I… I gotta ask, Harvey. Was it all worth it? Everything you did?”

Harvey looked up, sighing heavily as he stared as Nick’s bright yellow eyes. He looked hurt, betrayed. Honestly, Harvey didn’t blame him. He had _every_ right to fell that, hate Harvey for what he did.

“For the safety of this world?” Harvey asked back, pursing his lips. “Yes.”

Nick nodded, tossing the cigarette on the floor and stomping it out. “Well, alright then. Can’t wait to see what we’ve got going on at the funhouse.”

* * *

“Sir,” an intelligence aide said, handing him a report. “Fresh off the presses for you.”

“Thank you,” Harvey said, taking the folder and opening it. Not much was new. Since the fall of the Railroad and Brotherhood of Steel, plans had begun to expand the Courser corps to prepare it for an incursion into the Capital Wasteland and West Virginia. They expected that the East Coast chapter was strongest there, and no doubt they were seeking revenge for the loss they suffered against the Institute.

But something about this report was off.

“You,” Harvey said, pointing to the aide that handed him the report and snapping his fingers. “Is this fucking right?”

“Uh, y-yes, sir,” the aide said, nervously shifting his weight around.

Harvey furrowed his brow, squinting at him. “Get me Dr. Zimmer, right fucking now.” He pointed his finger at a nearby synth, standing by to assist. “You. Get me F9-61.”

“Understood, sir,” the synth said, heading off to communicate with the requested Courser.

A few minutes later, both Dr. Zimmer and the requested Courser arrived, both nodding respectfully to each other and then to Harvey as they entered.

“Dr. Zimmer, have you read this report?” Harvey asked, sliding the paper over to him.

“I have, yes,” he replied, barely even glancing down at it. “I’m asking many of the same questions you are.”

“Good. F9-61, read this and then make contact with MacCready. I need him on this ASAP.”

F9-61 nodded, picking up the paper. Within a few seconds, she put it down again, folding her hands behind her back. “What do you need me to brief MacCready on, sir?”

“Everything. I want him to follow her, see what she does. And she better not fucking die before I have the chance to get there. Is that understood?”

F9-61 nodded, stepping back to relay to MacCready’s location. By now, he might be out near Chicago right now. Couldn’t tell for sure. Dr. Zimmer sighed, taking a seat in front of Harvey’s desk. “You know that’s far outside our network,” he said.

“I don’t care. I need to know what she’s doing.”

“Do you want me to initiate production to build up an assault force?”

Harvey shook his head. “No. I’ll handle it myself. Send two Coursers to find local mercenary groups. I don’t care what they do, but make sure they keep notes on their ideologies in case we need to destroy them later.”

Dr. Zimmer nodded. “Understood, sir.” He stood up to leave, before turning around. “Oh, one more thing sir… someone arrived for you. It seems they know you, but I don’t have any memory of them.”

“Who is it?” he asked.

Before Dr. Zimmer could answer, Piper walked around the corner, nervously waving a smiling at him. “Hey, Blue,” she said sheepishly.

Within a second, Harvey rose from his seat, heading over to her. He could scarcely believe it. Two months ago, and he thought it was the last he had ever seen of Piper. Now she was in his office? It didn’t make sense. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Why?”

Piper sighed, swallowing hard. “I… I’ve been thinking, and seeing what you’ve been doing. Don’t get me wrong, the whole… _building people_ thing still makes my skin crawl, but… the Minutemen are doing good work out there. I’ve seen a lot of people openly talk about being synths. That wasn’t possible without you.”

“So, you forgive me then?”

She laughed. God, how he missed hearing that. “Yeah. Listen, it took me a while to be okay with it. But… I can’t stay away, in the end. I don’t know what it is.”

Nothing else needed to be said, other than the fresh and simple kiss that they shared. This is what he had longed for. If only it wasn’t so fleeting, if only he didn’t have to leave her again so soon. But, he knew now she understood. After all, a true leader’s job was never done so long as threats existed.

* * *

Somehow, some _fucking_ how, she had the gall to believe that her life would be easy and full of rest.

How wrong Suka had been.

“How many this time?” she asked, staring at the screens as she reviewed the footage from her Securitrons.

“They attacked the sharecropper farms,” Raul reported. “Maybe… I don’t know, five or six killed? Ten wounded.”

Suka gritted her teeth, felt her hands tightening into fury-filled fists behind her. These attacks had been plaguing New Vegas for _weeks,_ nearly coming to a full month now. Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t figure out what motivated – or who paid – these mercenary groups to attack her, attack Vegas.

“Raul, explain this to me.”

Raul stood behind her, no doubt shrugging helplessly. “I don’t know, boss. I don’t recognize any of these guys. Maybe it’s the NCR testing you out?”

“NCR would not use mercenaries. They would send Rangers,” Suka said, still staring at the looping feeds. “Legion has no need for mercenaries.”

None of this made any _sense_ to her. Nobody within Vegas’s limits would even dare to challenge her authority. The Strip Families didn’t even think to sponsor such a brazen assault against her. So who did that leave? The Brotherhood was dead, and no longer a threat. Ulysses had been killed. There was no other possible source for these attacks that Suka could think of.

“Robot,” she ordered, staring at the screens. “I want you to do something for me.”

“Sure thing, Suka!” it said. “What do you want?”

“Analyze these people. Where do they come from? I want to see if I can find out who hired them.”

The robot paused for a moment as its screens flickered. “Done! They’re primarily composed of mercenary groups in and around the Mojave! Some come from farther east, made up of bands of former Legion soldiers! Cool! I guess we should nuke them again, huh?”

Suka frowned, turning around and heading to the elevator. “Raul, keep the Lucky 38 safe, yes? I must investigate this.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

She sighed angrily, putting her vest on and loading her Kalashnikov. It had been a while since anyone had forced her to come out of the Lucky 38, made her cut short her time with Veronica. The elevator ride down only made her angrier by the time she hit the ground floor.

She traveled Vegas’s outskirts, mercilessly destroying anyone who dared to raise a gun against her. Suka interrogated everyone who might know even a little. The answers were short, fleeting, but slowly she began to piece together an image. Somebody from the East, people who spoke funny and wore all-black. She ruled out Legion remnants, the people here would have known them on sight.

These people, whoever they were, almost appeared to be everywhere and nowhere at once. All anyone knew is that they always took the same route to go to what must have been their base across the Colorado River. And so, that is where Suka went, passing by Boulder City on her trek East. The forgotten, abandoned city almost signaled a turning point, made Suka feel like if she went farther, she’d never come back.

And yet, she moved forward anyway.

* * *

Suka wasn’t sure where exactly she was. Somewhere in the desert. Rolling hills were capped by white sand, small half-dead vegetation all over. Off in the distance, she saw a mesa. Just beyond the hill in front of her, she saw a figure. No, two figures. Both had rifles. She gripped her Kalashnikov tight, anticipating a fight. No need for her to give up the high ground, and so Suka simply watched them, observing and waiting for them to near her. _If_ they did.

One of the two figures held back, taking a seat on the ground. Was this the start of some sort of attack, or a pause? She couldn’t tell. The other figure _waved_ to her as he approached. What was his game? Suka glared at him, carefully splitting her attention between the one approaching and the figure at the crest of the hill.

“I hear you’ve been setting up a little empire over here,” the figure called out.

“Who are you?” Suka demanded, flicking her Kalashnikov’s safety off. “Why are you here?”

The figure chuckled, coming into view now. He had a beard, with the sides of his head shaved clean to allow his hair to form some sort of strange ridge. “My name’s Harvey. I’m from Boston. My guess is you’re Suka.”

Suka narrowed her eyes, scowling. “That is _who._ Now tell me why.”

“I think you know.”

She stared back, unimpressed with his bold declaration. Suka had never met him before. She had never been to this “Boston” in her life. This man’s boasting didn’t make her afraid, fearful of him. If anything, it just annoyed her. “No,” she growled. “I do _not_ know. You are the man hiring mercenaries, yes? The ones who attack my country?”

“That’s not your country,” he spat, his voice suddenly full of venom. “That’s a fuckin’ dictatorship masquerading as a reasonable city. I _destroy_ people like you.”

“You are bragging very much,” she replied. “I think you and I should have simple talk, yes?”

“I think we’re speaking the same language now.”

Suka raised her rifle first, opened up with a burst of fire. However, the other figure must have transitioned to lying down as shots began to land her way. More bullets flew past her as she dodged both him and his sniper. Suka took cover near a rock, judging her options. The sniper wouldn’t give up as long as he had ammo, and Suka figured he probably had the munitions to spare. This bastard was competent, far more skilled than she had initially realized. She figured he had to have been in order to turn all these mercenaries against her.

“Knock knock,” he said, surprising her. How did he get here so fast? He struck her with the stock of his rifle, the sniper’s fire fading away. With them this close, he must not have wanted to risk hitting his client. Suka grabbed the man’s rifle, throwing him over her. His rifle was useless to her, felt light. She threw it aside, and in the confusion she realized she had lost her Kalashnikov. Time to settle this like a real Russian would. Suka charged him, intending to slam into him with her leading shoulder, but he dodged out of the way just in time and hit her with a solid blow to her back.

_Fuck,_ it hurt. She hadn’t realized that fighting with Ulysses had broken her so much, could still feel the pain coursing through her even now. Suka knelt down, unsheathed a knife she kept in her boot, whipped around and swung at him as he approached for another attack. He kept a close guarded stance, holding his arms close until she swung once too many. They began to grapple with the knife until he found a way to break her hold on it, delivering several kicks to her stomach. Suka fell to the ground, coughing up blood. _Fuck._ This wasn’t supposed to happen.

He exhaled, acting more like he had just finished an extreme workout rather than a fight to the death. “Damn,” he said. “Did you really think that knife trick would work out for you, fucko? When they told me the Russian courier of the West had taken Las Vegas, I expected a hell of a lot more.”

“It’s called _New Vegas,_ asshole,” Suka said, sputtering in between the pain.

“Newsflash, kiddo, I’m 200 fucking years old. I walked the streets of your little empire. You think you’re slick for dropping some nukes on a two-bit republic and some history nerds?” He knelt down, grabbing Suka’s chin and forcing her to stare into his eyes. “Try leading an entire company of men into combat, and _then_ come talk to me.”

He threw her head down, kicking her in the stomach again and forcing her to roll over. She swore in Russian as she stared at the sky, impossibly blue and seemingly endless. “You and I could have gotten along, you know,” he said, circling over her like a vulture. “But, it’s like my grandpa always said; don’t suffer fascists to live.”

* * *

Harvey smirked, looking down at the now-dead Suka. Without her, without the dictator holding Las Vegas together, he could send allies down here, have them seize control of the destroyed power structure here. Establishing communications here would be a boon, allow him to organize a response against the NCR. And from there… from there, Harvey could work towards destroying the Brotherhood in the South, prepare a force to take over the Midwest. Connect East and West, just as his forefathers had done.

“Think she’s done?” MacCready said, hustling over to him.

“Oh, she’s dead for sure.”

MacCready winced, shaking his head. “I don’t know. I thought she was done for sure after that one dude beat her around, but she came back from that.”

“Look at her. She’s bleeding from almost every place imaginable. Not to mention bleeding internally. Trust me, she’s _not_ coming back from that. Mojave heat and animals will do the rest if she’s not dead.”

“Well, if you say so,” MacCready said.

Harvey nodded, holstering his pistol and moving to grab his rifle. He’d have to clean it later. “Let’s go home.”

* * *

Suka let out a deep sigh, leaning against the elevator as it took her to the top of the Lucky 38. She had crawled through the desert, been left to die _again,_ but Suka’s sheer persistence and will to never, ever die again had let her come back. She was in pain, but _she_ was safe. Suka could finally go back to a simple life, start to rest with Veronica. _Veronica._ It had been too long since she had seen her. She must have been worried sick about Suka. She slowly opened her eyes, looking down at her bruised and aching body. Her arms were covered in scratches, and blood soaked her typically tan shirt. Something was broken, but she couldn't tell what through all the pain. Who even cared at this point?

The elevator was almost to the top. She could see Veronica's worried look now, intensely nervous about Suka leaving. Raul would probably be there too. _Ugh,_ she'd have to send Raul to fetch a doctor for her. She couldn't sew up these wounds on her own. Suka stood tall – as best she could, anyway, with her failing limbs and through the pain – waiting for the doors to open. They opened with a ding, and as they slid apart, Suka saw Veronica first.

She saw the pistol in Veronica's hand firing second.


End file.
